NASCAR's D.B. Cooper, Who Vanished For 40 Years After One Wild Race, Has Died

I need you to pull those belts real tight and strap in, because do I have a NASCAR tale for you on this Monday afternoon.

First, the sad news: L.W. Wright -- later known as Larry Wright -- died Sunday at 76. He reportedly passed away behind bars from colon cancer, which was recently discovered.

Now, I know what most of you are thinking -- who the hell is L.W. Wright? Why did you refer to him as D.B. Cooper? What does he have to do with NASCAR?

Well, that's a DOOZY of a story, and one not a lot of folks know. Hell, I vaguely recognized the name when I saw the news, but admittedly had to brush up on all things Larry -- L.W. -- Wright.

He was the most famous con man in NASCAR history, with a story that dates way back to 1982 and is filled with more twists and turns than an episode of Prison Break.

And hey -- D.B. Cooper was also a character in the first season of Prison Break, so it checks out.

Strap in:

Who was NASCAR driver L.W. Wright?

So, here's how the story goes. I'll try to be as brief as possible, but try to keep up, because it's all over the map.

Way back in 1982, a man named L.W. Wright entered a car for the upcoming NASCAR Winston Cup race at Talladega.

Side note: how great was the Winston Cup? Better time.

Anyway, nobody had EVER heard of this guy, but he claimed to have run over 40 lower-level NASCAR races. It was pretty damn easy to enter a race back then, so nobody really thought anything of it.

He convinced a fella named Bernie Terrell -- the head of a marketing agency -- to give him $30,000 to buy a car and enter the 'Dega race, and off he went. Just like that.

Now, L.W. here started to raise some eyebrows when he began name-dropping. Apparently, he told folks he had the backing of country music stars Merle Haggard and T.G. Sheppard, and he was entering his car into the race for a team called Music City Motorsports.

That story hits the newspaper the next day, and T.G. Sheppard was just as confused as anyone. He claimed he'd never even heard of L.W. Wright. He called Wright, who went on to say the announcement was premature.

Ya think?

Despite all that, NASCAR still allowed Wright to race. He qualified 36th with Sterling Marlin -- yes, that Sterling Marlin -- as his crew chief, but wrecked on the second qualifying lap.

Marlin later said he had his doubts about this new "driver" because he was asking a bunch of questions about the car that you or I would ask, but the team still managed to fix it up enough to race.

“He kept asking questions any driver should have known. He didn’t seem to know much about what was going on," Marlin said.

Long story short -- short being the key word -- Wright lasted just eight laps because he was so slow that the field lapped him pretty immediately, and NASCAR decided enough was enough and parked him (where the below video begins).

And then L.W. Wright brought his fake country music car down pit road, parked it and then ... vanished.

Poof! He just left. Gone. See ya later! And he wasn't seen again for 40 years. Seriously.

L.W. Wright emerges in 2022

Nobody could find him, and buddy, they were LOOKING because all those checks he wrote to get the car into the race? They bounced. Shocker.

The check to Marlin, to NASCAR, to Goodyear for the tires? All bounced. No good. Just pieces of paper. Nothing more.

NASCAR apparently lawyered up, Bernie Terrell -- the agency head -- even hired a PI, but it was to no avail. L.W. Wright had pulled it off. Our man was GONE.

And that was the last anyone ever heard of this mystery Talladega driver -- until April 2022. Forty years later, L.W. Wright showed up on the Scene Fault podcast to finally give his side of the story.

Here's a clip:

I mean, come on -- is that a NASCAR driver from 1982 or what? I've seen enough. I'm sold.

Anyway, you can listen to the podcast here, but Wright basically said that he didn't owe anybody anything from that Talladega weekend. He claimed that he paid with cash and all the sponsors that promised to back him backed out.

"If you can find somebody that said that I owed them $30,000 dollars, you tell them I will face them," Wright said during the podcast. "I want to see who they are, and I want to know how it come about. If it makes them stutter, then you know what I'm talking about, OK?"

Sterling Marlin, according to ESPN, obviously refutes that.

"Don't ask me if I was surprised," Marlin said in 2019. "Because I was not."

Shortly after the above interview, Wright ran into some pretty predictable legal issues -- theft, burglary, more bouncing checks and evading arrest, to be more specific. He was on the run for a while but eventually put behind bars last January, where he spent the past year.

Rick Houston -- the same guy who interviewed Wright two years ago -- announced the news of his death Sunday morning.

Wright went on the run from the law on January 27, 2023, 27 years to the day after my wife Jeanie and I were married. He was arrested and jailed a little more than two weeks later.

He’d been imprisoned ever since. Shortly before midnight began the day of our twenty-EIGHTH anniversary, Larry died.

He was 76. 

So there you have it. NASCAR's D.B Cooper is gone. Much like his time on earth, we barely knew him.

But boy howdy, did he sound like an absolute firecracker.