Southfield — Tommy Hearns was once the greatest prize fighter in the world.
Today, his family worries. Where in the world has the Champ gone?
Tommy Hearns is missing.
Hearns, 67, saw his Southfield estate foreclosed upon in April due to unpaid property taxes. The estate was then auctioned off to an investment company in September. Hearns was served eviction papers and told to get out by November.
The problem is that Hearns isn’t aware of any of this, according to his daughter Natasha Hearns-Barnes.
“He’s not doing well,” she told me. “You tell him something one day and he understands what you’re saying. But the next day it goes unremembered what you told him.”
For the past number of years, according to his daughter, Hearns’s affairs have been handled by his son, also named Thomas Hearns. She says her half-brother may have spirited their father away to some unknown location.
Attempts to reach the younger Hearns proved fruitless. Phone calls and knocks on doors at affiliated addresses went unanswered.
Hearns-Barnes showed me recent photographs chronicling the squalid conditions her father was living in before he disappeared. The refrigerator was nearly empty except for some bottled water and stale pizza slices. The basement was coated in black mold.
I paid a visit to the Champ’s former home. Through the cracked and dirty windows, I could see that the ceilings were collapsing and many of Hearns’s possessions had been abandoned.
His daughter filed for guardianship, citing mental deficiency, physical disability, and concern that her father’s property would vanish without proper management.
But the Oakland County Probate Court, itself embroiled in scandal and incompetence, failed to protect the boxing legend. The court rejected her application via email due to a missing ZIP code.
Tommy Hearns, who grew up in Detroit, won world titles in five different weight classes, making history as the first prize fighter to accomplish the feat. His bouts with Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Haggler, and Roberto Duran are remembered as some of the greatest and most savage fights ever.
Hearns’s blinding speed and raw power earned him the sobriquets “Hit Man” and “Motor City Cobra.” Over the course of his 30-year career, Hearns earned more than $40 million in prize money.
But relatives, hangers-on, and poor investments sapped Hearns of his wealth. In 2010, he was forced to auction off his robes, gloves, and classic cars to satisfy a $450,000 federal tax-lien. The Champ attended the auction and watched as his life was sold to the highest bidder.
But he still had the 8,700 square-foot estate in Southfield sitting on two acres surrounded by woods. The mortgage was paid in full in 2020.
So what happened? How did he lose a home he owned outright? A deep dive into the property tax records show that the elderly and dissipated Tommy Hearns may be an unwitting victim of fraud.
In early January 2014, a second mortgage was filed against Hearns’s home, which was worth more than $1 million at the time. Less than 10 months later, that same mortgage was foreclosed upon. The amount of that mortgage? Just $90,000. A company called C & S Management filed a claim to the home.
The man who controlled C & S Management is also the man who issued the mortgage. He then foreclosed on the mortgage and even drafted the business paper work on Tommy Hearns’s behalf.
His name is Jack Wolfe.
Wolfe is currently serving time in the state penitentiary for forging dead people’s signatures, creating fake deeds and property documents to steal people’s homes.
Following the 2014 “mortgage” foreclosure, there were a flurry of transactions between Wolfe’s shell corporations and the Hearns estate with no apparent purpose other than to squeeze equity from the home.
The last transaction involving a Wolfe shell company and Hearns’s Southfield home was in October 2019, in which the younger Tommy Hearns was deeded a percentage of his father’s home.
The scams Wolfe perpetrated against Hearn’ came to an end in 2020 when Wolfe was busted by television reporter Rob Wolchek of Fox 2 News.
That’s the same year when the true mortgage issuer—CitiBank—discharged the loan to Hearns, making him the outright homeowner.
That’s also the last year that property taxes were paid for Tommy Hearns’s estate.
There is a ray of hope in all of this. The county auctioned off Hearns’s home for $226,000. But the tax arrearage was only $100,000. By law, Hearns is entitled to the remaining proceeds, which would be $126,000. According to property records, it does not appear that the money was ever collected.
The legal time window to collect that money has closed. But according to a probate lawyer who has offered to represent the Champ’s interests pro bono, there is a chance he could at least collect that money. At most, he might be able to get his home back.
The problem is Tommy Hearns has gone missing.
Where are you Champ? We’re here and want to help you.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
