White Devil
The True Story of the First White Asian Crime Boss
by Bob Halloran
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Pub Date Jan 12 2016 | Archive Date Dec 03 2015
Description
In August 2013, “Bac Guai” John Willis, also known as the “White Devil” because of his notorious ferocity, was sentenced to 20 years for drug trafficking and money laundering. Willis, according to prosecutors, was “the kingpin, organizer and leader of a vast conspiracy,” all within the legendarily insular and vicious Chinese mafia.
It started when John Willis was 16 years old . . . his life seemed hopeless. His father had abandoned his family years earlier, his older brother had just died of a heart attack, and his mother was dying. John was alone, sleeping on the floor of his deceased brother’s home. Desperate, John reached out to Woping, a young Chinese man Willis had rescued from a bar fight weeks before. Woping literally picks him up off the street, taking him home to live among his own brothers and sisters. Soon, Willis is accompanying Woping to meet his Chinese mobster friends, and starts working for them.
Journalist Bob Halloran tells the tale of John Willis, aka White Devil, the only white man to ever rise through the ranks in the Chinese mafia. Willis began as an enforcer, riding around with other gang members to “encourage” people to pay their debts. He soon graduated to even more dangerous work as a full-fledged gang member, barely escaping with his life on several occasions.
As a white man navigating an otherwise exclusively Asian world, Willis was at first an interesting anomaly, but his ruthless devotion to his adopted culture eventually led to him emerging as a leader. He organized his own gang of co-conspirators and began an extremely lucrative criminal venture selling tens of thousands of oxycodone pills. A year-long FBI investigation brought him down, and John pleaded guilty to save the love of his life from prosecution. He has no regrets.
White Devil follows Willis through the workings of the Chinese mafia, and he speaks frankly about his relationships with other gang members, the crimes he committed, and why he’ll never rat out any of his brothers to the cops.
Told to Halloran from Willis’s prison cell, White Devil is a shocking portrait of a man who was allowed access into a secret world, and who is paying the price for his hardened life.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781940363790 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
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Featured Reviews
Rony C, Reviewer
A nonfiction account of a white man’s rise to the top of the Chinese Mafia.
John Willis is an American mobster who became part of the Chinese Mafia in Boston and New York. In 2013 he was sentenced to 20 years in jail for drug trafficking and money laundering and is not due to be released until at least 2028.
Bob Halloran, the author, is a news and sports anchor at a television station in Boston and in 2014 was granted access to John Willis and spent in total 7 hours with him discussing his life. He then, after diligent research and interviews with John’s girlfriend, family members, a gang member and the FBI has written this account of a story that started when John was 16 and became an orphan.
John was working as a bouncer in a bar in Boston frequented by members of the Chinese criminal fraternity when he rescues a young Chinese man, Woping, from a bar fight and is given a card with a telephone number written on it and told to call if he is ever in need. John with no money and nowhere to stay, calls the number and is taken to a home occupied by the Chinese gang Ping On. Soon he becomes an enforcer encouraging people to pay their debts in Boston, is sent to New York as a bodyguard to a Chinese gangster where he learns to speak Chinese. This is a crucial factor to help him rise within the Chinese organized crime hierarchy and whilst working again in Boston for a gangster named Bai-Ming a series of fights ends up with Bai-Ming becoming the most important gangster left standing and John as his second-in-command also rising speedily up the ranks.
The book describes the various events happening throughout John’s life of crime. I enjoyed the early years, how John became involved in the Chinese Mafia and how he rose through the ranks but I have only given the book as a whole two stars for two reasons. Although I appreciate the fact that Asian names are confusing to me, it did become very difficult to follow all the characters some of whom I am not sure needed to be mentioned and it did detract from understanding the main character and what prompted him to do what he did.
The other problem that I had was that the author is only able to relate incidents as told to him by John and some of the actions just do not ring true. The author actually asks point blank if John had killed anyone and he replies ‘I can’t answer that’. I find it hard to believe that John has never murdered anyone when you read the whole book and this makes the story not quite honest. We are only seeing things that John wants us to see and at times the author also puts in his own thoughts that detract from the main story.
This book would certainly be worth reading for anyone interested in the subject matter but it is not my type of novel. I understand a film is being made based on this book which l certainly might consider seeing.
Dexter
