Clifford Worley (1936-1993) was an American policeman and security guard from Detroit, Michigan. He was murdered by the Detroit Partnership in 1993 after his son Clarence Worley inadvertently stole a large cocaine shipment from the Mafia.
Biography[]
Clifford Worley was born in Tennessee in 1936, and his family migrated to the industrial city of Detroit, Michigan during the "Great Migration" of Southern whites and African-Americans to the North. Worley worked as a policeman in the Detroit Police Department before leaving the police force and working as a security guard; he was once married, but his alcoholism and domestic abuse led to his wife divorcing him, and Worley growing estranged from his son Clarence Worley. In 1993, he reunited with his son after Clarence married the prostitute Alabama Whitman, seeing him for the first time in three years. Clarence convinced his reluctant father to help him evade arrest for his murder of his new wife's former pimp Drexl Spivey by finding out from his former police colleagues if the police knew anything about the murder's perpetrators. Worley was initially reluctant to help his son, but Clarence persuaded his father that he had always stood by him, even after the divorce and his neglect as a father, and Clifford ultimately agreed to help his son. Clifford found out that the police believed the murder to be gang-related due to Spivey's ties to Blue Lou Boyle, a boss in the Detroit Partnership, and he told his son that he was beginning to think that killing Spivey was not a bad idea. His son then left him with the phone number of his friend Dick Ritchie, an actor in Los Angeles with whom he and his wife would be staying for their honeymoon, and his son politely refused Clifford's offer of monetary assistance. Worley then embraced his son and his daughter-in-law as they left for their honeymoon, having redeemed himself after years of poor fathering.
However, the Mafia discovered Clarence's driver's license on the body of Spivey and held him responsible for the theft of the cocaine, so Boyle's consigliere Vincenzo Coccotti and his henchmen Virgil Cammarota, Franco Grande, Luca Patane, and Lenny Francese ambushed Worley when he returned home to his trailer, hitting him and having him sit in a chair as they interrogated him. Worley was uncooperative, leading to Coccotti hitting him in the head and Virgil cutting open one of his palms. Worley swore that he did not know where his son and daughter-in-law were, saying that they had left on honeymoon and not told him any details. When Coccotti said that Sicilians were the best liars and could easily detect lies, Worley - seeking a quick death - recounted the story of the Moorish conquest of Sicily to Coccotti and said that the Sicilians were "spawned by n****rs", before asking Coccotti if he was lying. Coccotti, who had feigned laughter and amusement the whole time, gave Worley the traditional kiss of death on his cheek before shooting him dead with a handgun, angered at Worley's insolence and his refusal to cooperate.