Talladega Heist: Catching the NASCAR Con Man

The Story

If L.W. Wright hadn’t actually done what he did, nobody would believe it.

An average Joe could never bluff his way into a huddle at the Super Bowl or onto the mound at a World Series game. But somehow, Wright,a mystery man in the world of NASCAR, conned his way into the 1982 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, the fastest race on the most dangerous track in the sport. And then just as quickly as he appeared, L.W. Wright vanished — owing money and answers to all of NASCAR.

It’s a story that’s never been fully told — because L.W. remained a total enigma since the moment he drove off the Talladega track. This is a tall tale that could only happen in NASCAR, only in America, and only in the 1980s. How did he do it? And who was he? The mystery has never been solved. Until now.

In April 2022, after four decades of journalists, private investigators, racing officials, fans, and U.S. Marshalls searching for the mysterious L.W. Wright, someone finally found him. Veteran NASCAR journalist and podcaster Rick Houston sat down with Wright in two videotaped tell-all interviews spanning nearly 4 hours.

These interviews are the only ones ever conducted with the man himself and have never been heard in their entirety, with only small audio clips played on Rick’s NASCAR history podcast, The Scene Vault Podcast.

The videos, which we control exclusively, have never been seen. In them, a portrait of a complicated man emerges as Wright reveals his version of his story for the first time. It turns out the NASCAR incident was just one of many cons. He also bounced checks for decades and stole cars, a coal mine, a shopping mall, and an airplane — and almost got away with everything.

But a year after the interviews, Wright was caught by U.S. Marshalls and sent to prison, where he died a year later.

This makes the interviews that much more compelling. Some of it we know to be false, but, for some reason, we want to believe him…Could this have been L.W. Wright’s final con?