Detroit Underworld Icon ‘Maserati Rick’s’ Brother, Clyde, Suffered Same Fate, Both Brutally Slain 2 Years Apart

Almost exactly two years to the day swaggering Detroit drug lord Richard (Maserati Rick) Carter was shockingly killed in his hospital bed in the fall of 1988, his older brother and fellow narcotics chief in the Demetrius Holloway organization, Clyde Carter, was murdered alongside his girlfriend and in front of their infant child on an east side street corner. Less than a month later, Holloway was slain in a popular downtown Detroit men’s clothier.

Clyde Carter, 34, and Patricia Scott, 26, were shot to death September 17, 1990 on Lannette Street outside the house they rented by a single assailant who walked up on them around 10:30 a.m. that morning and opened fire. Twenty-nine year old Maserati Rick Carter was murdered as he slept in his room in the intensive care unit of Mt. Carmel Mercy Hospital by a gunman dressed as a doctor on September 12, 1988.

Months before his brother’s murder, Clyde made headlines when a $10,000 cash bond he had secured intended to spring his baby bro from Detroit Police Headquarters was seized by DEA agents after drug-sniffing dogs detected the cent of cocaine on the bills. A pair of Clyde Carter’s underlings in Holloway’s criminal empire, Dexter Washington and Sterling Williamson, were killed in the weeks preceding his own fatal shooting.

Holloway was the state of Michigan’s most well known, respected and successful African-American drug kingpin of the troublesome and turbulent crack era. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, his organization was under siege, being stalked by two breakoff factions, one headed by Maserati Rick’s heated rival Edward (Big Ed) Hanserd and the other headed by the sociopathic Best Friends Gang, Holloway’s paid-muscle-turned-enemies. Authorities attribute more than 20 gangland homicides to the set of conflicts

“It was a crazy time, for the good and the bad,” recounts one former dope boy. “People were stacking cash and the coroner’s office was stacking bodies. Everybody was glamming out., but we spent a lot of hours in funeral homes, too. Thinking back, it’s practically surreal. We were living a fucking video game. The ones of us that survived are lucky.”

The prime suspect in ordering the Maserati Rick hit was Big Ed Hanserd, who while never facing homicide charges just finished serving close to 27 years in prison for narcotics trafficking and illegal weapons violations. The equally high-profile and dapper Hanserd was released from a Mississippi federal correctional institute earlier this month and is residing in a northern California halfway house until November. He had been behind bars since the summer of 1989.

Lodrick (Ricky the Hitman) Parker, Hanserd’s No. 1 enforcer during his reign at the forefront of the volatile and decadent 1980s Motor City drug world, was put on trial for Maserati Rick’s murder, but found not guilty. Parker is in prison for life for his role in a 1990 extortion where his victims’ were firebombed and shot.

The Carter brothers, Big Ed Hanserd and Demetrius Holloway all grew up together on Detroit’s rough-and-rugged east side in the 1970s. Originally, they all did business together in the drug game in the 1980s. The Carters were Holloway’s top two lieutenants and Holloway was supplying Hanserd with wholesale cocaine. Hanserd’s decision to branch off on his own drove a wedge between him and his boyhood buddies, sending them to war with each other – Maserati Rick and Big Ed engaged in at least four gunfights from mid-1987 through Maserati Rick’s execution at the end of 1988.

The first shootout occurred inside one of Hanserd’s hair salons in July 1987. Another that same year resulted in Carter being arrested on attempted murder charges. In early 1988, Hanserd was wounded in a shootout with Carter but refused to identify Maserati Rick to responding police. Carter was shot in the stomach in a gun battle in front of his car wash headquarters on September 10, 1988, two days prior to being assassinated in his hospital room.

Clyde Carter handled all of his brother’s funeral arrangements. Famously, Maserati Rick was buried in a custom-made gold-plated Mercedes-Benz coffin with a price tag of $25,000. Demetrius Holloway and Clyde Carter were spotted together at Holloway’s pool hall the night before Clyde was murdered. Phone records showed at least a half-dozen calls between the two the day Maserati Rick was killed.

“Clyde was a true soldier, a hustler, he always had his crew’s backs,” recalled one former associate. “He wasn’t as boastful as his brother, but he was just as down for the cause.”

The deeply-connected, always meticulously-dressed Holloway testified as a character witness for notorious east side gangster James (Jimmy Red) Freeman at Freeman’s state racketeering trial within hours of Maserati Rick’s slaying. Freeman was an enforcer for Holloway’s underworld mentor Francis (Big Frank Nitti) Usher and a high-ranking member of Usher’s Murder Row gang in the late 1970s. On the witness stand, Holloway chalked up his near-$1,000,000 reported annual income to his legal gambling efforts in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Holloway only lived three weeks longer than Clyde Carter: he was shot in the back of the head on October 8, 1990 inside the Broadway, the Motor City’s premier urban men’s clothing shop. Local gangbanger Lester (Little Les) Milton, a Murder Row affiliate, and his brother Thomas (Toe-Tag Tommy) Milton were convicted of killing Holloway – Little Les was the triggerman, Toe-Tag Tommy the getaway driver – however who actually gave the order to have the 32-year old Holloway hit remains a mystery. The Carter-Scott double homicide was never solved either.