`           The play is produced, directed, and acted by male and female inmates from the state’s largest male prison and from its only adult female prison. The Times piece gave recognition to some of the inmates involved in the production of the play. It was a good, positive piece …

            Until, in the body of the piece, it digressed into the negative. Robertson turned to Marjorie R. Esman, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana who had this to say about the play: “This is just another example of the pervasive Christian environment at Angola, funded and supported by outsiders. The A.C.L.U. hopes that religious plays will not be the only ones that inmates perform for the public.”

            And then Robertson turned to the prison’s most famous former inmate, Wilbert Rideau, with the following:

            “An award-winning journalist who spent 40 years at Angola, [Rideau] often tangled with Mr. Cain, even calling him a dictator and a bully in his book, ‘In the Place of Justice.’ But having seen how few opportunities prisoners are allowed to have elsewhere, Mr. Rideau said he had grown less concerned about Mr. Cain’s motives.

            “’I don’t care why he does it, as long as they benefit from it,’ he said. ‘How many other opportunities are there for these guys to get to demonstrate their artistic ability? Why would anybody have a problem with that.’”

            Now ain’t an odd twist. Just two years ago Rideau had a big problem with religion in prison in his memoir in which he virtually accused Warden Cain of trying to kill him. Rideau attack Cain because he felt it would give him credibility with the outside media world—a fighting journalist taking on a mean, corrupt warden. Rideau had spent his entire “career” as an inmate journalist sucking up to each administration willing to allow him access to power, privilege, and special status. He truly gave a new definition to “Uncle Tom.”

            Rideau would now have the public believe he has formed a whole new opinion about religion in prison and its benefits. Rideau talked to Robertson, and once he realized the direction of Robertson’s piece, he was willing to say anything just to get his name and opinion in the Times.

            I felt almost some empathy for this man who will forever be just an “award-winning inmate journalist.” And that is so hard for him now: just being a little ole fish in a big pond unable to keep up with the big fish, willing to seize on any morsel of opportunity to see his name in print.

            And about this A.C.L.U. lady—a Rideau associate, I’m sure. She should spent more time trying to get at least one or two of those lifers out of prison rather than worry about the intentions behind a legitimate prison literary endeavor. She insinuates that Warden Cain’s motives are suspect unless he allows a Hindu, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, Buddhism, Zen, and a Third Rock From the Sun plays. What is in that New Orleans and Baton Rouge water?

            But I was determined not to let it ruin my day. Wife and I went to Lowe’s, bought a new refrigerator, dish washer, and new faucets—all upgrades in a kitchen we are renovating. And as I walked through Lowe’s, I felt so lucky: I was just another anonymous, hard-working person with no need or desire to be a former “award-winning inmate journalist.” Just another person—and what a great life that is.

            And, of course, Rideau gave me another idea for a blog. I tend to ignore this site most of the time, but every now and again Rideau will open his mouth and out comes another blog.

            Critics can say what they want about Warden Burl Cain but no one can deny that he has under control the largest and potentially the most dangerous prison in the United States. Show me any other warden who has 4,000 lifers without parole under his supervision and manages to keep the peace.

            And one last little thing: the Warden did not try to have Rideau killed as the award-winning inmate journalist suggested. That, like so many other things in his memoir, is just a figment of Rideau’s self-aggrandizing imagination.

          Nearly two years ago, May 2010, Wilbert Rideau released his memoir “In The Place of Justice” (Random House 2010). The memoir described our relationship in the Louisiana prison system where we both spent more than 40 years. Rideau’s account of that relationship, of course, was wholly one-sided: I was painted in very unflattering colors while the famed prison journalist painted himself in glowing colors. He is the proverbial “knight in shining armor” kind of guy. At the time Rideau’s book was published there were only limited copies of “Balance” still in circulation, but with its re-release there are now unlimited copies available.

          Balance, I believe, is the more accurate account of our relationship. When Jodie and I decided to write the book, we made a commitment to remain as factually accurate as possible. And, of course, I did not paint Rideau in flattering colors, but what I wrote was, and remains, the truth. Much of what he wrote about me and Jodie in his memoir are lies. Let’s be clear about one thing: Rideau had every literary right to criticize Jodie and me, and to judge any of our life decisions as harshly as he pleased. But he did not have a literary license to lie about us, nor to lie about so many other people in his self-indulgent memoir.

          Former Angola Warden Ross Maggio once told me that Balance was the most “factually accurate” book ever written about the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The Warden also told me shortly after the release of Rideau’s memoir that the famed prison journalist had lied about him, and others, in the book. Rideau not only lied about the many people with whom he had an ax to grind, but he repeatedly lied about events that simply did not happen. The events were fabrications motivated by a desire make himself look like the most powerful and influential force in the Louisiana prison system.

          I have been torched frequently with harsh criticisms by Rideau’s supports for things I have said on this website about the former inmate editor. They now have an opportunity to read Balance and develop a more informed opinion. Hardcore Rideau supporters will always think the worst of me. I understand that, even appreciate it. But I know some will probably read Balance just to see what I had to say about Rideau. Can’t ask for more than that.

          Balance is actually a memoir of the first 35 of the 40 years I spent in the Louisiana prison system. Five of those years, from March 1967 to November 1972, were spent on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary where Rideau was also housed for a couple of years. Prior to the June 1972 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia, which effectively invalidated all death sentences in the United States, there had been a quasi-official “moratorium” on executions in this country. Pre-Furman death row was much different than post-Furman death row. The first five years in the 1960s had seen executions dwindle until they stopped in 1965. Thus, the actual threat of execution dissipated during the moratorium years when m and Rideau were on death row.

          And while it would be nearly five years before a post-Furman execution was carried out—Gary Gilmore on January 17, 1977 in Utah—condemned inmates given death sentences in the wake of Furman understood with some certainty that they faced the real threat of execution. It was different during the moratorium years. Condemned inmates knew the constitutionality of the death penalty was working its way through the federal court system and would eventually be resolved by the Supreme Court. The national debate about the death penalty intensified, and there was no way condemned inmates could insulate themselves from it. Our lives hung in the balance of that debate.

          Some condemned inmates chose to ignore the debate, electing to free-floating through life on death row. It became their world—a surreal world of individual madness, perpetual noise, bar-fighting (threats shouted between cells), and depression satiated by prison officials with an unlimited supply of “downers” (anti-depressants). “Pill call” and “chow call” were the only daily events that disrupted the death row scene.

          Today I look back at that part of my life and it seems like another dimension—a time as remote to me as the Civil War. Legally speaking, I can reasonably say the death penalty never should have been imposed in my case. Suppressed evidence and prosecutorial misconduct resulted in that penalty. But, of course, morally speaking, the family and friends of my victim thought then—and some still do to this day—that the death penalty was the just and correct penalty for me.

          It’s hard to quibble about the death penalty. I feel an intense shame when I say the death penalty shouldn’t have been imposed on me because “I killed a man but didn’t mean to.” Killing a human being for any criminally-motivated reason is a “mark of Cain” etched on one’s life forever. No amount of “good works or deeds” will ever remove that mark.

          I was 20 years old when I killed a convenience store clerk during a botched robbery attempt. I am now 67 years of age – my number of years in this life has grown small. I am still tortured by thoughts “if only I had done that.” The point is: we cannot undo the terrible sins in our lives, and there are some we can never atone for. In the end, at the moment of the grave, we are the sum of all our acts in life—and in some cases, like mine, all the good deeds do not balance the ledger for that one horrible, unforgettable deed.

          Rideau, on the other hand, will go to his grave believing and trying to get others to believe that Southern racism, particularly as it existed in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1961, was the reason he killed Julia Ferguson and tried to kill Dora McCain and Jay Hickman. He will take to his grave the shameful belief that the 45 years he spent in the Louisiana prison system was an “injustice” when, in fact, his release from that system was an incredible grace of justice. Tragically, he did not celebrate his “freedom” from prison but the fact that he could claim he was a victim of prison.

          Wilbert Rideau and I will pass either into oblivion or face a higher power to account for all our sins in life. The book will then be closed on our debate.

            Rideau was released from the Louisiana prison system in 2005. It took him more than five years and two grants from the Soros Foundation–$75,000 for himself and $75,000 for his wife, Linda—before Random House in May 2010 released what many believed would be the another Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” So many were disappointed, even The New York Times, a longtime Rideau supporter, couldn’t conceal its disappointment comparing Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice, to a slow-moving weather system.

            But apparently the awards committee for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize felt that this slow-moving weather system deserved some literary recognition. Rideau captured first-place in the “non-fiction” category along with another $10,000 package of financial aid. A Google search does not reveal any other “significant” awards given to the memoir. The Dayton Peace Prize was established in 1999 to recognize individuals who had contributed to societies “torn apart by war.” And guess what? George Soros was one of the early recipients of the “peace prize” in 2002. Rideau with Soros, Soros with Rideau. Helluva combination.

            The Dayton Peace Prize morphed into the Dayton Literary Peace Prize which is “dedicated to celebrating the power of the written word in forging peace.”

            Do what? Must have read that wrong on the DLPP website. Nope. That’s what it says—“celebrating the power of the written word in forging peace.” If the DLPP’s awards committee can show me one “written word” in Rideau’s memoir that forges “peace,” I will kiss their behind in Times Square and give them six hours to draw a crowd. There is only one celebration in Rideau’s memoir—Wilbert Rideau and all his fabricated exploits.

            But I suspect the core in this “rotten apple” lies in the contributions the DLPP has received from the Soros Foundation—and if that is the case, that would make the DLPP and Rideau “kissing cousins.”       

            If that’s not the core of the apple, then it lies in Rideau’s ability to fill out awards competition forms—something he has plenty of experience at doing. Only Rideau could stretch a “prison memoir” by a convicted murderer into a celebration of “the power of the written word in forging peace.” Well, not the only one: the DLPP saw some “peace” somewhere in it.

            Come to think of it, perhaps the Soros Foundation could underwrite a “peace keeping” mission led by Rideau to Afghanistan. He certainly has the qualifications—he can lie with the best of them.

            Guess the former convict editor will give another “speech” when he formally accepts the award and the charity that goes with it. Can’t wait!

            But this “giant” of publishing in the shaky literary field would rather publish books with a “million little lies” as it did in 2006 with Jams Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” than fact-driven books. And, once again just a cat’s hair of professional judgment would have detected all those “lies” in Frey’s so-called memoir. The literary fraud promoting publishing house had to ultimately quietly settle a lawsuit in connection with Frey’s repeated assault on the truth (here)

            And, again, Random House finds itself in yet another “literary fraud” crisis—this time involving Joe McGinnis, who doesn’t have a sterling history of truth-seeking as evidenced by his book, Blind Faith, about former Green Beret Captain Jeffery McDonald. McGinnis’ book, titled “The Rogue” is highly critical and possibly defamatory against the former Alaskan governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. According to ABC News, Palin’s family attorney, Joe Tiemessen, has written a letter to Crown Publishing Group, a Random House subsidiary, accusing Random House of “knowingly publishing false statements.”

            “The book was widely panned by critics for using unnamed sources to criticize Palin and her family,” reported ABC News. Tiemessen cities an email they have access to in which MsGinnis writes that attorneys from Crown Publishing told him ‘nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip. The proof is always just around the corner, but that is a corner nobody has been able to turn’ and that McGinnis ‘ran out of time’ to sufficiently source the book.”

            In this case Random House published a book it knew contained “false information” which amounted to no more than “tawdry gossip.” Of course, a Random House spokesman responded by saying “we are confident that the reporting in THE ROGUE is solid, reliable, and well-substantiated. We stand by our publication and our author.”

            Of course, they do—they have stood by Frey and Rideau also. What else would you expect from a publishing house with a commitment to selling falsehoods as truths, fiction as fact, and embracing the authors who engage in this scandalous behavior.

            Never thought I would be in Sarah Palin’s corner but I am in this corner hoping she will prove McGinnis the “scumbag” so many have called him in connection with “The Rogue” and prompt her legion of followers to boycott Random House.

• “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey
• “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” by Misha Defonseca
• “Love and Consequences” by Margaret B. Jones
• “Angel at the Fence” by Herman Rosenblat
• “The Thieves of Manhattan” by Adam Langer
• “Last Train From Hiroshima” by Charles Pellegrino
• “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson

           Each of these memoirs were embellished with fabrications; lies about events the authors said happened which did not happen. Memoirs are a natural depositing place for fabrications, especially about events to which all the parties are dead or untraceable except for the author. Publishing houses, especially Random House and its subsidiaries, has a sordid history of not vetting, “fact-checking,” memoirs submitted to them for publication, particularly memoirs involving authors with whom Random House has a longstanding relationship.

            Wilbert Rideau and his 2010 memoir, “In The Place of Justice,” is a prime example. Random House fact-checkers certainly did not vet Rideau’s memoir which is littered with factual errors and outrageous fabrications which could have discredited with a few telephone calls. I would venture a guess that Rideau’s editor and Random House fact-checkers were so dizzy, or perhaps enthralled, by wading through one embellishment after another in the manuscript that they could not distinguish fact from fiction. Below is a list of Rideau’s more glaring fabrications and factual errors in his memoir:

• Lied that a parole board chairwoman secured executive clemency for two convicted murders from Gov. Edwin Edwards in March 1988 as a favor to Rideau.
• Lied that a pardon board member regularly visited him in The Angolite office in 1987 and divulged to Rideau all the confidential workings of the board.
• Lied about conversations and events involving two former Angola wardens, Ross Maggio and John Whitley, in an effort to enhance his power and influence at the state penitentiary
• Lied that The Angolite in 1989 took on a sitting federal judge and a sitting governor, forcing them to take actions they would not have taken except for pressure from the prison magazine.
• Lied that The Angolite influenced a 1989 State Police investigation into corruption at the state penitentiary.
• Lied that The Angolite forced the state legislature to change the state’s method of execution from the electric chair to lethal injection.
• Lied that The Angolite was not involved in a massive 1986 pardons-selling scheme when one of the magazine’s staffers bought a pardon.
• Misidentified a Kansas City Catholic bishop with a Baton Rouge Catholic bishop who was a proven pedophile.
• Misrepresented that both Gov. Dave Treen and Gov. Edwards were in office the same year, stating that both brought about pressure against The Angolite.

           These are some of the more patently ridiculous fabrications/factual errors in Rideau’s memoir—and all of them are worse than, or at least comparable to, the fabrications that discredited the other memoirs cited in this article. Rideau’s fabrications/factual errors could easily be established with one day of investigation. But the mainstream media does not have an appetite for this kind of messy affair; after all, it was the media who created Rideau and continues to promote him.

            Still, I will leave the challenge hanging out for any interested person—disapprove any of the fabrications/factual errors I have leveled against Rideau’s memoir. They cannot.

            This latest comment certainly raises the legitimate question about why I created this website and why I continue to post articles on it. I will explain in very succinct terms the reasons for both. Wilbert Rideau and I had a professional relationship for nine years as co-editors of The Angolite, the official inmate publication at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. During that period, Rideau and I were individual recipients of the George Polk Award, the ABA Silver Gavel Award, and the magazine was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy and Sidney Hillman journalism awards.

            During that nine-year relationship, I saw that Rideau was an idea thief, a master manipulator, a liar, and an individual who “hogs the credit” for any joint venture with anyone else, no matter what it is. Our relationship, of course, ended badly in 1986 after it was revealed that I had assisted federal authorities in uncovering the largest “pardons-selling” operation in the history of Louisiana—a criminal enterprise in which Rideau had knowledge of and played a significant role in.

            In the wake of my departure from The Angolite, Rideau launched a crusade to destroy my reputation as an award-winning journalist by telling media outlets, including the New York Times, that I had violated the integrity of the prison publication by becoming an informant for the FBI. This crusade was launched with the active encouragement of former Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps. Both men had mutual self-serving interests in initiating and maintaining this crusade: Phelps was trying to damage control massive corruption at the state penitentiary which went far beyond the pardons-selling conspiracy and Rideau was trying to cover up his own involvement in the pardons-selling conspiracy which included his assistance brokering a criminal pardon deal for a member of the Angolite staff. This information has been detailed in numerous previous posts on this website—and has never been refuted by any media outlet or Rideau supporters.

            So when Rideau announced he planned to pen his memoir following his 2005 release from the Louisiana prison system, I fully expected to be a target of his literary wrath, and, sure enough, he launched broadsided attacks on both  me and Jodie. I’m a big boy. I can handle any legitimate criticism from Rideau. He has every right to explain his “side of the story” about our relationship and the reasons for its breakup. What Rideau doesn’t enjoy is a literary license to lie with professional impunity. I have refuted all the lies Rideau told about me and Jodie through previous posts here.

            Of course, Rideau supporters will accuse me of having self-serving reasons for refuting the erroneous information about me and Jodie in his memoir. And that is a legitimate observation, one I understand completely. And had the former convict editor and “media darling” simply confined his lies and misrepresentations to me and Jodie, I probably would have let that roll off my back like water off a duck. But Rideau went much further with his lies and misrepresentations. He lied about conversations and events involving former Angola Wardens Ross Maggio and John Whitley—something that could be easily verified by the media contacting those gentlemen—and beyond his criticism and disdain for current Angola Warden Burl Cain, the former “most rehabilitated prisoner in America” insinuated that Cain either orchestrated or was somehow involved in a “conspiracy” to kill hm.

            And beyond the lies and misrepresentations about these prison officials, there are a score of factual errors and fabrications in Rideau’s memoir designed to either re-write or reshape The Angolite’s and Angola’s history to embellish the former famed prison journalist’s accomplishments and achievements. I have also detailed and documented these factual errors and fabrications in previous posts. I did so because the “public record” needs to be set straight with facts—not Rideau’s distortions and manipulations of it. I was not only at the prison game, I was one of its major players. So as the old adage goes, “you can fool the fans but not the players” applies here.

            So as long as the media continues to provide Wilbert Rideau with a public forum in which to promote his memoir, I will continue setting the public record straight even if it hair lips his media buddies. I don’t need or want publicity—and I certainly don’t need the public to see me as a famous former “award-winning prison journalist.” Both of these are vitally important to Rideau—he’s gone so far as to lament how he misses the status, power and influence he enjoyed in prison during his tenure with The Angolite. He’s desperately trying to establish the same position in the free world with his Soros Foundation subsidized memoir (and it literally makes me sick to think of the number of computers the $150,000 the Soros Foundation gave to Rideau and his wife for their bogus literary endeavors would have placed in classrooms where underprivileged children are daily struggling to not only survive but become useful, productive members in the community while Rideau bemoans the fact that he not an “important” inmate anymore).

            So that’s why I continue to post articles, like this one, on this website. Anyone doing an Internet search about Wilbert Rideau will find this website and read some of its posts. And they can draw their own conclusions.

            Linda Rideau, the former Linda Labranche, has never written or published a book; in fact, a Google search does not reveal anything written or published by Rideau’s wife. In 2005 she submitted a proposal to the Soros Foundation to write a book, or treatise, about prison publications and a free penal press focusing, of course, on The Angolite, the official inmate publication of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, of which Rideau was editor for more than two decades. The Soros Foundation was impressed—so much so that they gave Labranche a $75,000 grant in 2006 to subsidize this literary endeavor. Problem is: Linda Labranche, the name under which the grant was bestowed, either did not produce or create a project worthy of publication. In a nutshell, she got over on the Soros Foundation to the tune of $75,000.

            Not to be out done, hubby Rideau decided to reap some benefits from the “grant hustle” circuit. With Labranche’s $75,000 snug in the bank, Rideau sought and secured a $75,000 grant to subsidize his memoir, One couple, one household—and they make off with $150,000! Nice haul for a former bank robber.

            And what did Rideau do with his share of the loot? He used it in a 3 ½ -year effort to produce his memoir that turned out to be nothing more than a “pat me on the back” production in which he made the following braggadocio accomplishments: he singlehandedly turned The Angolite into an award-winning publication; he changed the method of execution in Louisiana; he took on and backed down a sitting governor and a federal judge; he instructed prison wardens how to resolve inmate rebellions; he used his “insider” influence with a parole board member to get two convicted murderers released from prison; he instructed a Lake Charles politician how to develop a plan to defeat a rival; he lied about two former prison wardens; he used his “insider” influence to learn about the “secret” workings of the state pardon board; he was responsible for a state police investigation into corruption at the state penitentiary; he criticized Sister Helen Prejean as being “naïve” for supporting an inmate protest; he had a network of spies and informants who kept him apprised of everything that went on in the prison; and he survived an attempt on his life orchestrated by the prison’s warden.

            The problem is: none of it is true! Rideau is a habitual liar. He can’t help himself: it rooted in his DNA.

            And if you look at his two previous books, Life Sentences and The Wall Is Strong, you will see they are anthologies that grave-robbed The Angolite and other inmate publications. And in The Wall Is Strong, he plagiarized four of my articles which resulted in the lead author of the book, criminal justice professor Burk Foster, providing me with a written apology and removing the articles from the book—one of which I was awarded the 1980 ABA Silver Gavel Award. So not only is Rideau a consummate liar, he is a literary thief as well.

            And this brings me back to the new book Rideau and wife are working on about “crime and criminality.” I’m sure they are doing everything they can to sucker another foundation out of grant money to subsidize this “War and Peace” effort. Wilbert Rideau knows nothing about crime or criminality—he couldn’t even tell the truth about his own crime and criminality. And I’m sure wife Labranche knows even less about the subject. This means the couple will have to rely upon the thoughts, ideas, and published works of established criminal justice experts—some of which Rideau will try to pass off as his own work product.

            As New York Jets linebacker Brad Scott said: “Can’t wait!”

            I have posted recent pieces about the incestuous relationship the former award-winning convict editor has with National Public Radio which has abandoned the basic principles of professional journalism in a concerted effort to force the general public to “embrace” Rideau. NPR took this effort to the unconscionable extreme of contacting the National Association of Black Journalists for an explanation as to why Rideau has not been invited to address the group at its upcoming convention. NABJ President Kathy Y. Times responded to the inquiry: “Our program is incomplete. The program committee is still working on invitations.”

            It is one thing for a media organization to report the news and even highlight extraordinary individual achievements but quite another to try to pressure an independent media organization to invite someone to speak before the group. Perhaps the NABJ has the same problem with Rideau expressed by Leonard Pitts: “ … Rideau is not the 19-year-old who committed a senseless crime four decades ago. It’s easy to understand why some would celebrate his freedom … But me, I keep circling like a homing pigeon back to an immutable fact. He killed somebody. There isn’t enough rehabilitation in the world to minimize that act.”

            Rideau has repeatedly lamented the fact that he’s been unable to secure employment with any media organization since his release from prison. The simple truth is that Rideau was never truly a “journalist” in any real sense of the word. He was just a “convict editor” of a prison publication that produced a brand of “journalism” not really acceptable in the real world. Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), offers clear and convincing evidence that he is not a writer and more importantly that he is not a “journalist” who respects the facts and truth.

            Wilbert Rideau was a good “prison story” as the “nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner.” But that didn’t make him a “journalist.” He was just an extraordinary inmate. It took him five years to write his memoir and he had to have the Soros Foundation underwrite that literary endeavor with a $75,000 grant. Rideau has never produced a single piece of literary work without some assistance from someone else either in prison or in the free world.

            And it is a professional disgrace now for NPR to try to not only foist Rideau off on the general public as something he is not but to pressure the NABJ to give him an invite to the group’s convention. And even if the NABJ succumbs to NPR’s pressure tactics, Rideau’s invitation the group would not be authentic – it would be a token invite from NABJ just to satisfy the pressure.

            But Rideau doesn’t care. He would appear before the group, assuming the role as “king of the day.” He will speak about exaggerated accomplishments while in prison and lament how hard it’s been to adjust to the free world. It will be vintage Rideau—the victim turned hero.

            Anyway, Martin had Rideau on “Behind Closed Doors” to discuss the hidden issue of sexual violence in the nation’s prisons. Rideau’s “expertise” on this issue is a single article that appeared in The Angolite in 1979 and garnered Rideau a George Polk Award. John Darnton, a former associate editor with The New York Times (another publication with a longstanding fascination with Rideau), orchestrated the Polk Award committee to re-bestow the 1979 award upon Rideau earlier this year. The re-presentation of the Polk award was the opening used by NPR to once again promote Rideau and glorify the memoir he released last year, “In The Place of Justice” (Random House 2010).

            The following exchange between Martin and Rideau underscores the far-left agenda of NPR and its so-called “news journalist”:

            MARTIN: I want to talk about the reporting that has brought you so much attention over the years, and to an issue that you brought so much attention to when many other people were not paying attention. But before we do, I do want to talk to people who are not aware of the full that  – why you were incarcerated.

            When you were 19, you decided rob a bank – do I have this right? – because you wanted to get out of town. You panicked; things went awry, and two employees of the bank that you attempted to rob were hurt, and the third was killed.

            RIDEAU: Killed.

            MARTIN: So you never denied that you were involved. The whole question was, was it intentional?

            RIDEAU: Right. This was before the Civil Rights Movement, when the state was being forced to integrate. And they turned it into a political issue and they fabricated – they made the case more than what it was. And you know, I didn’t have resources or attorneys in order to help me prove that I didn’t do what they said I did.

            So it wasn’t until 44 years later that I had the resources and the lawyers able to put up a defense, and show the jury that much of what they said I did was really, fabricated. The truth is that yes, I did, unfortunately take a lady’s life, and there is no excuse for that.

            This website is called “Wilbert Rideau-Real Story” for a reason. To debunk the lies and distortions the former convict editor put in his memoir. But before I once again take Rideau to the woodshed for lying about his crime, I would like to call attention to several points about the Martin/Rideau exchange. First, Martin deliberately gave Rideau an opportunity in a public forum to portray his case as a “political issue” based upon fabrications. Martin doesn’t know anything about the real facts in Rideau’s crime. Second, Rideau said his crime occurred “before the Civil Rights Movement.” The Civil Rights Movement began in 1948 and gained national impetus in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Rideau’s crime occurred more than a decade after the Civil Rights Movement began. I will now rehash my previous posts concerning Rideau’s crime. He made this issue timely when he told Martin his crime was based upon fabrications. This analysis of Rideau’s crime is based almost exclusively on the description he provided about the crime in his memoir.

            Rideau killed Julia Ferguson on February 16, 1961. There is no doubt about that. He has admitted to the crime as he did on Martin’s show. A Louisiana jury in January 2005 convicted Rideau of manslaughter in connection with the crime. The issue that remains in dispute is whether Rideau killed Julia Ferguson in cold blood or killed her in a state of panic. Rideau points to the 2005 jury verdict as “clear and convincing evidence” that he did not have a specific intent to kill Ferguson when he stabbed her through the heart.

            Following the robbery of the Gulf National Bank, Rideau took three of the bank employees to a remote area in Calcasieu Parish. He said he planned to release them so he could make good of his escape. In his memoir, Rideau said once he and the three hostages got into Ferguson’s four-door British-made Vauxhall, he instructed Ferguson to drive the vehicle and ordered bank employee Dora McCain to sit on the passenger side of the front seat. He then instructed the bank’s vice president, Jay Hickman, to get in the backseat behind Ferguson while he climbed into the backseat behind McCain.

            This seating arrangement is important—four adults sitting in a small, cramped foreign-made vehicle. McCain is in the passenger front seat while Hickman is sitting on the driver’s side backseat. The vehicle, according to Rideau, is moving slowly down a gravel road in a remote, isolated area. Rideau described what happened next:

            “Suddenly, the younger woman [Dora McCain] was bolting from the car. ‘Stop the car!’ I yelled, grabbing at the door handle and springing out. I slipped, losing my footing. The woman ran across the road. Scrambling to break my fall, I leaned against the trunk of the car. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ I yelled. Hickman, now out of the car, lunged toward me and the pistol. It went off, and he ran. I continued firing—five more shots in rapid succession—until the gun emptied. Both women fell. ‘Mr. Hickman!’ I called, running a couple of steps after him, stopping as I realized I could not see him, then spinning around in time to see the older woman [Julia Ferguson] start to rise. I grabbed the knife, stabbed her, and ran to the car where I stood, shaking violently and grasping for breath. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black night. It was deathly quiet. Oh, God, what have I done? I got into the car and took a deep, ragged breath. ‘Oh, God,’ I murmured, ‘help me—please.’ I took off down the gravel lane. I needed to distance myself from this horrible place, this nightmare.”

            Before the 2005 jury, Rideau provided this description of what happened in the remote area:

            “I explained that after we wound our way around Lake Charles for a quarter hour, I got lost on a gravel road looking for the Old Spanish Trail. Disoriented and lost, I’d told Mrs. Ferguson to slow down so I could think, get my bearings. I was looking through the rear window when suddenly Mrs. McCain bolted from the bar. I lost my footing as I sprang out behind her. As I regained my footing leaning on the side of the trunk, yelling for her to stop or I would shoot, Mrs. Ferguson jumped out and followed McCain. Everything was going to hell. Mr. Hickman had come out of the car and tried to either hit my hand or grab the gun. The gun went off, intentionally or not—I didn’t know which, and I started firing until the gun wouldn’t shoot anymore. Both women fell. Mrs. Ferguson got up. I ran to her and stabbed her. I was acting on panic and impulse. Then I ran to the car turned it around, and headed back to Opelousas Street. All I wanted to go was to get away from there.”

            With these two varying accounts, Rideau provided a picture into his “panic defense.” But that dog won’t hunt under a scrutiny of the facts. Focus on the picture. It’s important. The car is slowly driving down the right side of the gravel road. To the left, on the driver’s side across from the incoming lane, was a clearing in a wooded area. While the vehicle was still moving, Dora McCain opened the door and leaped from the vehicle. She did not fall and was not injured by this bold move. She ran towards the back of vehicle and across the other lane of the road toward the clearing. Julia Ferguson stopped the vehicle. Rideau jumped out and leaned on the trunk of the car to brace himself. He was looking at McCain’s back as she fled into the clearing area.

            Here’s where Rideau’s description fade out of focus. He said Hickman and Ferguson also leaped from the vehicle once it stopped. It’s not really clear which one jumped first. But Rideau said Ferguson, who was at the driver’s side door, ran back toward McCain who was fleeing away from the rear of the vehicle into the clearing. Why would Ferguson run toward the rear of the vehicle in the direction of McCain where Rideau was poised to shoot? Logic says she would have run across the other lane into the clearing toward the front (not the rear) of the vehicle. She would have run out of harm’s way, not into it. 

            As for Hickman, Rideau would have us believe that Hickman jumped out of the rear of the vehicle, and either reached across the trunk or came completely around the rear of the vehicle to slap at Rideau’s hand or the gun. Not logical. Hickman would have run away from Rideau across the other lane of the road into the clearing toward the front (not rear) of the vehicle. Why would he even try to reach across the trunk of the vehicle? There is no way he could have reached Rideau. To have slapped either Rideau’s hand or the gun, Hickman would have had to run around the rear of the vehicle to get at Rideau on the other side. Again, not logical.

            Now here’s where Rideau’s descriptions insult logic. He said that after Hickman lunged toward him the pistol went off. At that point Hickman supposedly ran. Rideau said he fired “five more shots in rapid succession.” Being behind the vehicle, Hickman had two choices in where to run: either into the woods behind Rideau on the passenger side of the vehicle or back towards McCain and Ferguson into the clearing on the other side of the road. Rideau implies that Hickman ran in the direction towards the woods on the passenger side of the vehicle. He said he ran after Hickman for a “couple of steps” before spinning around towards the passenger side of the vehicle only to see Julia Ferguson trying to rise at which time he ran over and stabbed her.

            Now, Rideau said the first round in the six-shot weapon accidentally discharged when Hickman slapped at the gun. Hickman then ran at which time Rideau fired “five more shots in rapid succession, emptying the gun. By Rideau’s own account, he fired all five shots at the fleeing Hickman who was wounded in the arm (a fact Rideau left out of his crime descriptions).

            That raises the question of how Dora McCain got that bullet wound in her neck?

            She was the first person out of the vehicle. She ran toward its rear before the car came to a complete stop and continued to run across the other lane of the road into the clearing area away from the rear of the vehicle. In order for McCain to be hit by one of the five shots fired in rapid succession, Hickman must have run away from the driver’s side of vehicle in her direction towards the clearing and away from the rear of the vehicle.

            Thus, in order for Rideau to have spun around in time to see Julia Ferguson trying to rise from the ground, she could not have “followed McCain” as Rideau claimed. She had to be some distance away towards the front of the vehicle in the clearing area.

            The only other logical explanation for McCain’s neck wound from the rear is that the first shot was not an errant accidental shot caused by Hickman lunging at Rideau but a deliberate shot Rideau fired at the fleeing McCain right after he jumped out of the vehicle. That would explain why she fell (before he fired the “five shots in rapid succession”).

            There’s one other factor to consider here. Rideau said it was a “pitch-black night” and he “couldn’t see anything.” That’s strange. The lights of Ferguson’s vehicle were on while she was driving because it was dark. Night darkness came early in February, even 1961. To accept the “pitch-black” statement, we have to believe Ferguson stopped the Vauxhall, turned off the engine, and pushed in the “lights” switch in (located on the dash board). All vehicles in 1961 were equipped with “lights” switches that had to be manually pushed in and pulled out to control the lights. Stopping the vehicle, putting it in a neutral gear, turning the keys to shut off its engine, and pushing in the “lights” switch to shut off its headlights would have been a lot of actions for a scared woman to take before jumping out of the vehicle to flee from a hostage taker.

            But assuming it was “pitch-black” as Rideau said, how did he manage to get off a shot that hit McCain in the back of her neck as she ran into the clearing and another that hit Hickman in the arm? And if it was so “pitch-black” that he “couldn’t see anything,” how did Rideau see Ferguson trying to rise when he spun around away from the fleeing Hickman and McCain. Bottom line: it was not “pitch-black” because Ferguson left the vehicle’s lights on when she jumped out of it and fled. She would not have wasted time pushing the “lights” switch in.

            The holes in Rideau’s “panic defense” are as gaping as the one that sunk the Titanic. His own accounts of the events which led up to the killing of Julia Ferguson actually supports the State’s theory that he ordered the three hostages out of the vehicle, placed them side by side in a line, and opened fire on them with the pistol. But even accepting Rideau’s accounts of what happened, the fact that he spun around, saw Julia Ferguson trying to rise, and ran over to her and stabbed several times in the chest is not a “panic attack.” His does not indicate whether he believed McCain or Hickman were dead or even badly wounded. So why stab Ferguson in the chest with a knife one time, much less two or three times as he indicated? A moron, regardless of how panic stricken he may be, knows that stabbing someone in the chest will more than likely kill them.

            And why slit her throat? Rideau’s defense team presented “expert” testimony that Julia Ferguson’s throat has not been “slit from ear to ear” as the State had alleged. But the defense team was forced to concede that Ferguson’s throat had been cut. It makes no difference if Rideau actually slit her throat or just nicked it in a cutting motion. His intent was to make sure she was dead. His descriptions do not mention the neck wound. Whether the neck wound was inflicted before or after the he stabbed Ferguson in the heart is immaterial. It is clear that he intended to kill Ferguson, either by cutting her throat or stabbing her through the heart.

            Rideau’s written confession is much closer to actually what happened that night than his memoir accounts—and in that confession he said he intended for all three hostages to be dead when he drove off into the night. And Dora McCain’s account of what happened that night are far more credible than Rideau’s “panic defense” presented at his 2005 trial.

           Jay Hickman died in 1988 and Dora McCain was too frail to testify at the 2005 trial. The jury, therefore, did not get to see or hear the testimony of either surviving witness.

           In the wake of the 2005 jury verdict and the release of Rideau, Gary Andrus, a nephew of Julia Ferguson, told the Washington Post: “[Julia] was my Sunday school teacher. She was a strong Christian woman, and taking care of her invalid father was her whole life. He just didn’t take her from our family, but from her invalid father.”

            We all know what happened to Julia Ferguson. But there is nothing in the public record about what happened to her invalid father. Who cared for him after her brutal murder? We’ll probably never know. He was Rideau’s silent victim.

            As for Jay Hickman, he rarely ever discussed the horrible events of that fateful day in February 1961—the day Rideau decided to rob a bank to get enough loot to start a “new life in California” as he said. Don Hickman, the only child of Jay, was 73 years old in 2005 when he talked to the Post. He said his father spoke only about two things concerning the robbery: “Dad said it was about $60,000 that Wilbert never saw. It was payroll for Chennault Air Force Base. And something else: they all [the bank employees] knew Wilbert. Thought he was a pretty nice young man. That’s what Dad couldn’t understand. Why would he do something like that?”

            Dora McCain did not have any public reaction to the 2005 jury verdict that resulted in Rideau’s freedom. Her family and friends shielded her from the morbid curiosity of the media. The last or certainly one of the last interviews McCain gave to the media was in March 1999. She spoke with Mail-On-Sunday, a London-based newspaper. Reporters Sharon Churcher and Peter Sheridan recounted McCain’s feelings about Rideau’s Oscar nomination for his work on the prison documentary, The Farm: Angola, USA. Normally a regular viewer of the Oscar’s award ceremony, McCain told the British reporters she would “sit with her husband and grandchildren in her bungalow near Lake Charles, Louisiana, and stare at the blank screen on her TV.”

            The 67-year-old McCain told Churcher and Sheridan that she still lived in agony from the wounds Rideau inflicted upon her near English Bayou that cold February day. Her back burned when she sat too long, and her partially paralyzed neck often went into vicious spasms from the 13 bullet fragments that remained lodged in the scar tissue which encircled her throat. And while surgeons were able to reconstruct her shattered vertebrae, she still felt “as if a drill [was] being twisted into her spinal cord.” These physical pains and horrible memories had become a fixture in her life, like the time one of Rideau’s supporters struck her with a “Free Rideau” placard after she opposed one of his clemency applications.

            To say McCain was upset about Rideau’s Oscar nomination would be the classic understatement. But the grievances she expressed in 1999 are still applicable today, especially since Rideau has used his memoir to indict everyone but himself for the tragic events on February 16, 1961. The former “famed prison journalist” even went so far as to imply that Mrs. McCain was psychologically unstable by the “trauma” she suffered and, therefore, her recollection of those events were not completely reliable (here, here, here, and here). But thanks to her Mail-On-Sunday interview we now know exactly what Rideau did at that remote area next to English Bayou where he took his victims.

            “Maybe good people don’t realize [sic] the gravity of this man’s offence [sic],” she told Mail-On-Sunday. “Or is it that they have become immune to violent crime? Rideau is making himself out to be the victim and somehow I have become one of the vic-timisers [sic]. But this was a deliberate crime he committed … his intention was execution-style murder. Why does no one talk about that horror? I believe he has manipulated all these people in Hollywood. They should remember it’s very hard to know what’s really going on in Rideau’s head. I knew him when I worked at the bank. He worked as a porter at a nearby fabric shop and he’d come in to get changed [sic]. I was fooled. I think it is very possible that he is fooling people again. In his handwritten confession he said he intended me to be dead. Is he going to come and get me if they release him?”

            Rideau paints the self-portrait in his memoir that he was a naïve, confused, uneducated, and angry “colored kid.” He’s managed for 44 years in prison to cultivate that image among his liberal media supporters and he was always blessed with a “gift for gab” to make it sound true. But as McCain told the Mail-On-Sunday reporters Rideau had a “silver tongue” even at 19, “Wear this,” Rideau told McCain as he handed her a scarf while forcing her into the getaway vehicle. “When I let you all out of the car in a little bit so you can walk back, I don’t want your pretty hair to get wet.”

            “Wilbert,” Dora and Julia pleaded, “think about our children. Don’t leave our children without mothers.”

            “Cover your pretty hair, Dora,” Rideau replied. “I won’t hurt you.”

            Jurors who found Rideau guilty in 2005 and who spoke to the media afterwards said it was statements like these which convinced them Rideau did not have a specific intent to kill the hostages when he took them to the English Bayou area. But McCain’s recollection about what Rideau did to her and Julia Ferguson clearly reveal his intent.

            With Hickman in the snake-infested waters, and from her position slumped on the ground, McCain said she saw Ferguson: “Julia staggered back … she’d been hit. He went over to her and jerked her up from her knees. She begged him to spare her life. He said, ‘Don’t worry. This will be quick and cool.’ It was the first time I saw the knife. He slashed it across her throat until her head was nearly severed and then he stabbed her several times in the heart.”

            That memory never abandoned McCain, nor did what happen to her next.

            “I’d fallen to the ground,” McCain continued, “playing dead, but he yanked me to my feet, kicking me. I can remember to this day how gentle he was with my hair, he kept calling it my ‘lovely hair.’ He pushed it to one side and then he started feeling along my neck until he felt the point where the spinal cord meets the neck. I felt the cold metal of the gun there, and then he pulled the trigger. There was an explosion and white light, and then I just felt numb. He kicked me in the ribs a couple of times and said, ‘you better be dead, bitch.’”

            That is what Rideau’s surviving victim said happened on February 16, 1961. You will not find these details in his memoir. And you certainly will not hear them on any NPR program Rideau appears on. At the end of the day, you will have to decide which version is correct. As for myself, the fact that Julia Ferguson had a wound to her neck, regardless of whether it was a “nick” or a near decapitation-like wound, establishes a specific intent to kill, particularly when considered with the several stab wounds to Ferguson’s heart. You don’t stab a defenseless person several times in the heart and either cut or try to cut their throat in a state of “panic,” implying you did not mean to really harm that person. Not even Rideau’s “silver tongue” can sell that theory to me.       

            Michel Martin said Rideau tried to rob the bank to get enough money to get out of town. Rideau has said he robbed the bank on the spur of the moment because he felt marginalized by the white community in Lake Charles. I examined this issue in a previous post, and it deserves to be revisited here.

            In 1959 Rideau got a job at Halpern’s Fabrics in the Southgate Shopping Center in Lake Charles. He was seventeen at the time. He made $70 every two weeks, and, as he pointed out, that was “good pay for a colored in a non-construction job in 1959.” He said it was enough money to “help out” his mother, buy “nice clothes,” and spread the money around among friends.

            So by his own admission, Rideau had a good job and no reason to steal. In fact, the manager of the store, Martha Irby, took the time to teach Rideau everything about the fabric business, including the store’s “bookkeeping” with the advice “you never know when this might one day benefit you.” How many 17-year-olds in 1959, especially one of color, would have  embraced this as a wonderful opportunity to prepare for adult life

            Not Wilbert Rideau. He looked for every “opportunity” to see himself as a “victim,” especially of racism. This character flaw manifested itself in his reaction to the first pay raise he received at Halpern’s. Pleased with his initiative and ability to assist in all aspects of the store’s operation, Mrs. Irby recommended to the store’s owner, Alvin Halpern Jr., that young Rideau be given a fifty percent pay raise. Mr. Halpern apparently thought that was a bit extravagant but did give Rideau a raise of $2.50 a week, increasing his pay to $75 every two weeks.

            “Mrs. Irby was embarrassed,” Rideau wrote. “I seethed.”

            Rideau expects everyone to “seethe” with him—to casually and blindly accept that the $2.50 raise was just another example of how “white people” screwed him over. A $2.50 pay raise in 1959 or 1960 at any job was nothing to sneeze at.

            “I was fed up with a white society that marginalized me,” he explained “I brooded about that, and about the fact that I had no real friends, only some people who would become chummy when they hit me up for cash. I felt my life was empty, and I despaired of things ever being different.”

            Let’s try to wade through these victimized feelings. Rideau’s had a good job, made excellent pay. He was an “intelligent” kid by his own admission. But somehow “white society” had marginalized him, and “black society” liked him only when he had money. Damn, what a terrible, horrible hand to be dealt in life—the fate of virtually every teenager in America in the 1950s.

            Rideau’s memoir then described the events leading up to the bank robbery It was February 15, 1961—the day before that infamous bank robbery. It was payday for him. He went to the bank and cashed his check. He then took a bus to Waldmeier’s Pawn Shop located in downtown Lake Charles. He went to the pawn shop, he said, because he had been “thinking off and on about getting a gun.” He described himself as a “puny nineteen-year-old” who had been “picked on, bullied, and harassed” throughout his life. The final straw that “broke the camel’s back” came after he was “slapped and threatened in front of others at nightclub by a guy with a knife.” He walked away from that incident ‘fuming” and vowing it “would never happen again.” He decided he had to have a gun for self-protection and to prevent any future humiliation.

            A recurring problem in Rideau’s memoir is the contradictions he expresses throughout it. For example, at one point he wrote that he had “no real friends” but on the very next page he said “many of my buddies had knives.” Friends and buddies generally denote the same kind of relationship. So did he have friends or did he not have friends?

            Let’s assume Rideau did get “slapped” and he decided he needed a gun for self-protection because he was “puny.” Although he’s seething because of the embarrassment at having been at being slapped in front of others, he took pains to say he did not purchase the gun “to hurt anyone;” only to “deter” anyone from trying to push him around again. It just so happened that on the way out of the pawn shop he saw a “hunting knife in a scabbard” which caught his eye so he bought it “on impulse.”

            As soon as he left the pawn shop, Rideau took a bus back the Southgate mall area where he bought a “box of .22 caliber cartridges at an army surplus store.” Another contradiction. An empty gun can “deter;” a loaded gun only has the potential to “hurt” someone or something.

            On the morning of the robbery, February 16, Rideau reported to work carrying the loaded .22 pistol and knife in his coat pocket. The question that immediately arises is why he needed so much weaponry for self-protection at work. Going to Halpern’s was not like going to some seedy “nightclub” where he might encounter a brute ready to smack him in the face.

            While he offered no logical explanation for carrying the weapons to work with him, Rideau made a point to lament that working at Halpern’s “was my future—a dead-end job.” He said that realization made him “restless” and consumed him with a “gnawing need for things to change.”

            Perhaps a good-paying job, with trust and responsibilities and an opportunity for advancement, was a “dead-end” future for a 19-year-old “colored” kid in Lake Charles in 1961. I don’t know. I was not a “colored” kid in Lake Charles in 1961. But I do know Wilbert Rideau, and I understand the true source of his personal discontent. He expressed it in the book. He had just heard that “California was a good place for colored people, with plenty of opportunities for good jobs and a chance to be somebody.”

            In his memoir and media interviews about the memoir, Rideau lamented the fact that he’s been unable to secure and maintain steady employment since his release from prison. He got a $75,000 grant from the Soros Foundation in 2007 (and his wife got a $75,000 grant the year before) to subsidize the writing of his memoir. He told Erin Moriarty on CBS’ Sunday Morning that he missed being a “big shot” in prison; that in free society he is a “nobody.”

            That was the same psychological problem he had in 1961. He could not stand being a “marginalized” nobody—a “colored” kid working in a fabric store in Lake Charles. California offered him a chance to be “somebody” just as prison gave him the opportunity to be a “big shot.” Rideau could have found work after his release from prison, but it would have been the kind of anonymous labor suited only for a “nobody.” He was not going back there. Just the Gulf South National Bank offered him a chance to be “somebody” in California, his memoir offered him a chance to be a “big shot” in the free world

            Rideau claims that taking the pistol and knife to work did not mean he had pre-planned the bank robbery. He said the bank robbery idea just evolved out of the day’s mundane events. He said he was not feeling well at work, so he knocked off “about two o’clock.” He walked to a nearby men’s store “to visit with the janitor there.” He said the janitor, who must have been a “friend” of sorts, asked Rideau to help him move some things around. Apparently Rideau had begun to feel better, at least enough to help the janitor with his work He worked so long in fact that he missed the bus to take him home. So he decided to wait for the next bus in his cousin’s car which was parked at the rear of the shopping center. He fell asleep “until almost 5:30.” He had missed yet another bus.

            Rideau then “meandered to Weingarten’s Supermarket, where I talked to the bag boys and porters I knew and arranged for a ride home with one of them who was leaving at 7:30.”  As with the janitor, it can reasonably be assumed that these “bag boys and porters” were friends of his because at least one of them was willing to give him a ride home. This certainly does not comport with the image of a “puny” kid with no friends as he tried to portray himself. He was strong enough to move heavy rolls of fabric around at Halpern’s, strong enough to help his janitor friend “move some things around,” and friendly enough with the bag boys and porters at Weingarten’s to catch a ride home.

            Still, Rideau said the plan to rob the bank suddenly popped into head while sitting on a bench outside Weingarten’s zipping a soft drink and waiting for his ride home. It was about 6:15 or so. The overcast sky caused by smoke “belching from the city’s chemical plants” suddenly made him “feel totally alone, miserable, frustrated, and desperate.” He decided right then and there that he needed a “new life away from Lake Charles” and the only way to accomplish that was to rob the bank which “was stuffed with money.” With all that money he could “buy a new life someplace else.”

            There you have it: the decision to rob the bank was spontaneously made outside Weingarten while sipping a soda and having a difficult time with the “overcast sky.” But in the very next breath he added that “three people worked at the bank, but on Thursday evenings only the manager, Jay Hickman, and one teller worked.”

Now, how would “puny” little Rideau know that operational detail unless he had been monitoring the work schedules of the bank employees?

            While sitting on the bench of Weingarten’s, Rideau theorized he could tie up the bank employees and leave them in either a coffee room or the bank’s vault. “It shouldn’t take but a few minutes,” Rideau wrote, “after which I’d return to Weingarten’s to catch my 7:30 ride home, pack some clothes, leave my family some money, and tell them I was going on a vacation and not to worry about me.”

            And he added:  “When would an opportunity like this occur again?”

            He made his decision. He went to the bank. “What do I have to lose?” he asked himself.

            But the best laid plans always have flaws. About midway through the robbery attempt one of the female bank tellers managed to make a telephone call to the bank’s main branch and inform them that something was going on at the Southgate location. The police were alerted. Rideau said “everything … suddenly spun out of control.” But not so much so that he was about to leave the money behind. “I told Hickman to fill the suitcase, and hurry,” Rideau wrote.

            Suitcase!

            What the hell is a suitcase doing in a bank—unless the robber brought it to stuff all that money in.

            Rideau wrote about taking the gun and knife with him to work that morning but there was no mention of the suitcase. The “suitcase” appeared suddenly in the middle of the robbery. The news media had long reported that, along with the gun and knife, Rideau bought a Samsonite suitcase and carried it with him into the bank.

            Rideau did not explain the origins of the suitcase—and for good reason. The idea to rob the bank could not have spontaneously sprung into his head sitting at Weingarten’s if he had bought a Samsonite suitcase and took it with him into the bank. He may have explained taking the gun and knife to work as self-protection, but not the suitcase.

            The presence of the suitcase in the bank destroys the spontaneous, non-planned decision to rob the bank.

            And if Rideau lied, even by omission, about the suitcase because it undermined the spontaneous decision made at Weingarten’s to rob the bank then what can be believed in the memoir?

            These are not fabrications. They are facts presented in Rideau’s own memoir. Michel Martin should have read the memoir before she made foolish ass of herself. But, again, like other NPR “journalists,”she had his head so far up Rideau’s rear end that she could not see the facts.

            The fact is that Wilbert Rideau is a liar. His memoir is a literary fraud. And NPR has repeatedly engaged in unethical, irresponsible journalism by supporting both.

           Once again I must correct another of these liberal media stalwarts: NPR. Lamenting the fact that Rideau has not received an invitation to speak before any professional journalism group since his release from prison, NPR had this say in its promotion to get Rideau invited before one of these groups:

          “Mark Saltz wrote for the Associated Press in 2006, ‘while in prison, Rideau went from an illiterate teenager to a well-read, self-educated man.’”

          Once again I have debunked the myth that Rideau was an “illiterate teenager” when he was convicted and sent to Louisiana’s death row in 1962 (here and here). This myth was created by Rideau while he was in prison and absorbed as fact by liberal journalists who loved the downtrodden black inmate in a redneck southern prison who self-educated himself by virtual candlelight. The myth became so entrenched that Mark Saltz reported it as a “fact” in 2006, one year after Rideau’s release, and NPR continues to hype the myth.

           Wilbert Rideau at the time he committed his crime and after he was sent to prison was a highly intelligent young man. His own high school teachers reported as much. Rideau also had the criminal cunning to buy a pistol, a knife, and a suitcase needed to rob a bank, take three people hostage, wound two of them as they fled for their lives, and kill a third by stabbing her through the heart and slitting her throat as she begged for life.

           Rideau wrote in his memoir, “In The Place of Justice” (Random House 2010), that he decided to rob the bank in 1961 at age 19 because the white community in Lake Charles, Louisiana had so marginalized him that it was the only way to escape the city and start a new life in sunny California. Now does that sound like an “illiterate teenager?”

           There’s another fundamental flaw in the erroneous illiterate teenager myth. Rideau said in a number of media interviews before his release from prison that white prison guards smuggled him books to read while on death row and in his memoir he credits a fellow condemned inmate as the one who got him interested in reading by providing him with a copy of a Frank Yerby book.

           If Rideau was illiterate, how did he read Yerby’s Fair Oaks and a host of other books “smuggled” to him on his path toward self-education. Being illiterate means the individual cannot read or write.

           The fact is that Rideau is a literary fraud—and media outlets like NPR are bound and determined to shove him down the throat of the American public.