Max Wade, the infamous Marin bad boy who stole Guy Fieri’s Lamborghini and attempted to murder another teen, was granted parole by a state board Thursday.
Wade was sentenced to 21 years to life in prison in 2014 for a teenage crime spree that earned him sensationalized coverage in the national news media—and even an eponymous rap song.
At age 17, prosecutors said Wade rappelled from the ceiling of a Lamborghini dealership to steal Fieri’s $200,000 car. He later fired a handgun into a pickup truck containing 18-year-old Landon Wahlstrom and 17-year-old Eva Dedier in a Mill Valley shooting.
Wade’s parole approval is preliminary and is subject to review for up to 120 days.
On Thursday, 29-year-old Wade appeared nervous during his virtual hearing, delivering stiff answers when asked about his criminal history and time in prison.
“I had an addiction to criminality,” Wade said when asked about a sprawling fake ID business he operated as a 14-year-old.
He said he planned to sell the Lamborghini—which he did not know belonged to Fieri when he stole it—to a buyer in the Dominican Republic connected to the cartel. He planned to invest the money in his illicit ID operation, which by then had printed “thousands” of fake driver’s licenses and yielded Wade “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Wade admitted to illegally owning multiple revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, rifles, a shotgun and an AK-47.
After the Mission Impossible-style break-in, Wade said he swapped the car’s plates and used a radio frequency scanner to locate its tracker. He kept the car in a storage unit rented with a fake name.
“Brave kid,” Fieri said of Wade at the time.
Months later, a motorcycle-borne Wade fired five bullets into Wahlstrom’s pickup truck in an attempt to murder the 18-year-old. He did not know that Dedier, who he was infatuated with, would be in the car.
At his parole hearing, Wade admitted that he tried to kill Wahlstrom because of an online spat a few weeks earlier—breaking from his defense more than a decade ago that he did not actually intend to kill Wahlstrom.
“I didn’t want to feel weak,” Wade said. “I wanted to uphold the criminal image I’d tried so hard to maintain.”
He claimed he did not intend to kill Wahlstrom because he was jealous of his relationship with Dedier, contrary to news reports from the time.
William Muniz, commissioner of the state Board of Parole, noted that Wade has avoided any serious rules violations during his time in prison. A clinician assessed him as a “moderate-low” risk.
“Mr. Wade does have a juvenile record, but he has matured,” Wade’s attorney Tracy Lum, said during the hearing. “He has learned the impact of his actions.”
Wade, for his part, insisted that he is a changed man, noting that the death of a close friend in a drug deal gone wrong early in his prison tenure led to “deep introspection.”
During his time behind bars, he earned a GED and is studying computer science. He said he aspires to work in cybersecurity, though he’d be happy with “any job”—including working on a CalTrans cleanup crew.
“I don’t have a desire to seek control,” he said. “I don’t have a desire to maintain the narrative of an outlaw.”
Prior to Thursday’s ruling, the Marin County District Attorney’s office “strongly” objected to Wade going on parole.
“Mr. Wade is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Deputy District Attorney Cassandra Edwards said during the hearing. “It’s challenging at best to believe that Mr. Wade is going to be in any way satiated by picking up trash along the freeway.”