The man we are going to discuss today owns
an accolade it’s said not held by any other person, and that’s the fact that according
to the FBI he is the only white guy ever to gain high esteem inside Chinese organized
crime. He’s somewhat of a legend now and you might
say has a kind of mythical status. He is indeed known as The White Devil, but
he was born simply John, John Willis. Having made a name for himself with the Chinese
Mafia he even has a Cantonese name and that is Bac Guai John. So, without any further ado, let’s have
a look at how John became the devil. Vice magazine wrote in 2016, “John ‘White
Devil’ Willis rose to the highest echelons of Boston's Chinese mafia.” But what do we know about John the child? Unfortunately there isn’t all that much
information available about Willis as a kid, but it seems he had a hard start in life. We are told he grew up in the 1970s and was
looked after by his mum after his father abandoned the family. But then disaster struck when he was 14 years
old when his mother suddenly passed away. The teen it’s said then had to fend for
himself. In a feature in Rolling Stone it’s written,
“He was once just another hockey-playing Catholic kid in this working-class Boston
neighborhood,” but that kid grew into a man that became a crime lord in the underworld. That article tells us he muscled his way into
that underworld and soon became a kingpin. When we say muscled, it’s written he had
a tendency towards violence, with one U.S. attorney calling him, “a very dangerous,
violent man.” But his main business was not violence but
selling illegal substances, or rather selling legal substances illegally. His product was oxycodone, something often
called pharmaceutical heroin. We’ve all heard of the devastating opioid
crisis in the USA, and so now you know one of the main players. How much money he earned through his enterprises
is not known, but Rolling Stone estimates in a short time he made around $4 million. Willis according to that article said he made
ten times more than selling those highly addictive pills. Apparently he spent a lot of that money on
fast cars, boats and strip clubs. As is often the case with such people, it
all came crashing down. Crime pays, but as we all know, not many people
get away with it for long. Willis was eventually arrested and sentenced
to 20 years for drug trafficking and money laundering. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and
we should ask just how he managed to make his way into the Chinese underworld and then
demand respect in those circles. “My life’s been pain,” he told Rolling
Stone, and the tattoo on his arms consisting of Chinese characters will tell you that as
the word means “pain”. He then said, “I’ve struggled for everything
that I did.” According to Willis, his father had left the
family because he had no choice. It seems it might not have been such a bad
thing in some ways as he was violent and an alcoholic. The father got his money from working as a
carpenter but he also did jobs for the Irish mob. Those jobs were simple: Collect money and
hurt people. It seems the father hurt the wrong man at
some point, a man who was a mobster, and if he didn’t get out of Boston his life would
soon be over. It was a rough and tumble existence, with
Willis saying his tough town of Dorchester was also the stomping ground of perhaps the
most infamous Irish mobster, Whitey Bulger. But young Willis said he had sworn to his
mother that he wouldn’t waste his life. He got fit, played hockey, kept on the right
side of the tracks while his brother and sisters had decided they would spend their childhoods
on the wrong side of the tracks. Willis said he kept well away from drugs and
crime, but he had some of his dad’s DNA, and that was a predisposition for violence. At just a young age he was sent to a special
school for troubled kids after beating another kid up. Things went from bad to worse when his brother,
still young himself, suddenly died of a heart attack. You might wonder how someone so young could
go that way, but Willis said that his brother was prone to days and nights not sleeping
with his only fuel being what some people call “marching powder.” But things would get even worse, and you might
even sympathize for this man despite him being part of an epidemic that ruined so many American
lives. That’s because now brother-less, Willis
was about to experience another tragedy. His mother had diabetes, but just a year after
the death of her son she lost her legs because of the disease. Only amputation could save her life. With her remaining children being delinquents
it was left to Willis to look after her. We are told he bathed her and wheeled her
around the family home. And then tragedy struck again. When Willis was just 14 she died, too, also
of a heart problem. He was alone in the world, unsure how he would
navigate it. “It was tough, I ain’t gonna lie,” he
said about that time. “You grow up, you become a man, in an hour.” It was tough because social services had no
idea he was living alone. They thought he was living with his sisters,
but they were hooked on substances in another part of town and rarely visited young John. He said he didn’t even know how to cook,
look after himself, and because he had very little money he couldn’t even heat the house
in winter. He was fortunate enough though to have some
friends and he would often eat at their houses, and then suddenly cash started coming in. Even as a young teen, he was tough as a rock. This landed him a job as a bouncer at a local
club, and we are told he had no problems whatsoever with dealing with drunken guys causing trouble. He was full of rage, said one of his childhood
friends. The girl said about him, “He’s never dealt
with his mother’s death, never dealt with the fact that his father left.” This is how he got himself into gangster-dom. It’s said one night a fight broke out between
a Korean gangster and a Chinese gangster. Willis’ boss had always told him to stay
well away from these guys as they were dangerous, but Willis helped the Chinese guy and beat
the Korean. The Chinese man had had some mace sprayed
into his eyes during the altercation so young John took him to the bathroom and helped him
get the stuff out of his eyes. We are told this act of kindness was gratefully
received and on the way out of the club the Chinese gangster handed the teenager a note. It read, “Here’s my number. if you ever need something, call me.” A friendship was born, an unlikely one too,
given John was basically just a kid and Asian gangsters are not known for taking on white
guys. We should say, though, if you look at photos
of this 14/15 year old boy, well, let’s just say he is built like a human tank. Time passed and on one particular evening
Willis had no cash to his name and he was hungry. He went to his sister’s house and she refused
to answer the door. He thought, ok, what the hell, and he called
the number of the Chinese guy. According to Willis when this guy answered
the phone he said, “Hey, white boy!” He said in no time at all a bunch of Asian
guys turned up at his house in BMWs. All these guys were dressed immaculately he
said and they just told him to get in the car. They took him to a large house in South Boston
where the man who he had helped was waiting. His name by the way was John Joe. Upon entering the house Willis saw what to
him looked like the interior of a palace. He said there were guns everywhere and a lot
of rather beautiful-looking women. These guys he said treated him like family
immediately. They fed him, told him to relax and watch
some movies with them. He soon found out that he was with part of
the “Ping On” gang, which had been connected to factions of the Chinese underworld for
centuries. They were powerful, demanded total loyalty,
and they were ruthless if you crossed them. But John Joe had a soft spot for this orphan,
and he knew that he could be useful given his size. As he was just a kid, too, he would no doubt
be loyal. Willis said John Joe told him, “Don’t
go back to work. From now on, you stay out here.” He gave him 500 bucks and then said get rid
of those terrible clothes, my boys are taking you shopping. Willis said to Rolling Stone, “These people
took me in, took care of me, like, you know, I was their brother, their son. So that became more important to me than anything
else.” What’s perhaps strange is that Willis was
still going to high school now and again, but the gangster life started taking up more
of his time. He was sent to other cities to learn how things
worked in the underworld, noting that other gangs and acquaintances of the Chinese mafia
would look at him strange. They didn’t usually come in tow with some
rather bulky white teenager. He said it was hard, though, at times, because
he wasn’t treated like one of them and they spoke Cantonese to each other. He wasn’t exactly welcomed by all members
of the gang, but John Joe always had his back. He was given a gun and ended up meeting Chinese
crime lords in places such as New York city. He was soon doing jobs, or what he referred
as heists. He showed he wasn’t scared, even when things
got hairy and he got shot at. This impressed his fellow gang members and
Willis said he soon became one of the brothers. He learned to read and write Chinese and this
made his relationship with his brothers stronger. He then said he learned from these guys and
started to adapt his personality to Asian culture. He’d always been aggressive and would often
lose it in public, but he learned that such outbursts are a loss of face and shameful. Being hot-headed was for stupid people, and
one should always keep one’s cool in public. He learned that it was important to respect
your elders as they had wisdom to give, and by 1990 he had got the name Bac Guai John
and was well respected in the Chinese underworld. This once loud and aggressive Catholic kid
had now become a respectful but still dangerous man who had turned from the church towards
the Buddhist temple. Word got around and soon Willis was the preferred
enforcer for some high-ranking Chinese mafia bosses. One particular mob boss took a liking to Willis,
who it’s said admired his strength and dedication. Willis said he was always taking notes, watching
how this boss ran his empire. He got the name Dragon Boy from this boss,
and that was due to Willis being incredibly strong. Willis had to show that strength many times,
saying in the 90s there were widespread gang wars and many executions. He had to be careful, and at times he had
to hurt people. He said he'd never been convicted of murder,
but didn’t say he hadn’t killed anyone. We should also say that at this time he was
making a lot of money selling heroin. He had become more than just an enforcer,
but then he got 5 years for dealing in the year 2000. Five years later and he stepped out of jail
and stepped into a Mercedes CL600. Shortly after he met his wife to be, a 19-year
Vietnamese girl. When he asked her for her number in a club
she said, “What are you, a white kid with an Asian fetish?” After a few months of dating she started asking
where all his money was coming from and why he often had cuts and bruises on his knuckles. He didn’t want to lie anymore and just said,
“I’m a gangster.” He then changed his Merc for a Porsche 928
S4, which was perhaps indicative of business going well. And then one evening he was asked to sit at
the table of a man nicknamed Sky Dragon, someone said to be right at the top of the Chinese
underworld. They got along well, and Sky Dragon even told
him he’d heard good things about him and had a lot of respect for a young white kid
who could learn Chinese and rise so high in such an unfamiliar territory. But despite gaining all this respect, and
even though he said he still had a lot of love for the guys that had invited him into
their house many years ago, he wanted to do something on his own. It would soon become apparent to him that
there was a line of business he could operate that no one else in the Chinese underworld
had taken advantage of. This was distributing what was known on the
street as Oxys. Due to lax regulations and the pharmaceutical
industry churning these pills out in their millions, Willis found a way to get his hands
on them. He was well aware that this was a more lucrative
business than the smack trade he had been involved in. That stuff was stigmatized, but those little
pills embossed professionally could be devoured by anyone not wanting to associate themselves
with the word “junkie.” Soon much of middle class America would develop
backaches and Willis had the antidote to the pain. He then got some of his own white boys together,
other Southies. But to be in the gang, you had to embrace
the Asian gang culture he had learned. You had to be respectful and loyal, you got
the tattoo and you joined the family. Willis and his gang were buying the pills
for $9 and selling them for $15, and they were selling thousands and thousands of them
each week. They were making huge amounts of money, but
blowing most of it on a very decadent lifestyle. “Money, nice cars, big houses are nothing
without the ones you love,” Willis said to Rolling Stone, adding that he had gone
off course. His Asian brothers knew too well that this
was not how to live. They kept low profiles and their heads above
water, but Willis didn’t have his mentors around as he was now living in Florida. He began to lose the plot, once tearfully
telling his cousin, “I’m a monster. I don’t know any other life.” The FBI had a case on him anyway and his arrest
was imminent. That happened and he was taken away from his
loving wife. She has since said she is waiting for him,
and he might well get out in 2028. She said their love for each other hasn’t
waned, but she hopes to live a simple life one day with her white devil. Asked if he will change his life when he gets
out, Willis answers, “What life is it? This is who I am. Can you go in the jungle and take the stripes
off a tiger?” But he says while he is what he is, there’s
no way he will get back into the criminal life again. There should be a movie coming out soon about
the White Devil, but after watching this show what do you think about him? Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to check out our other video
The White Death. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
