Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

           My wife and I established this website this past June. It was created in response to Wilbert Rideau’s memoir, In the Place of Justice (Random House 2010), which was released in late May. The memoir made reference to me on 26 pages and my wife on 11 pages. Those references were broadside attacks on our character, credibility, and actions in relation to Rideau. Those references are riddled with lies, misrepresentations, fabrications, and distortions of fact. We understood immediately that we had to defend ourselves from the attacks which automatically prompted the question as “how” we could do that. With a recently released memoir, Rideau had the corner on the media with many prominent journalists securely in his hip pocket ready and willing to write whatever he told them. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to quickly realize the only venue we would have any measure of control is a website—one devoted exclusively to telling the “real story” about Wilbert Rideau. Ergo, the creation of this website.

            But why even bother with a website?

            The answer is as simple as the question. Rideau’s memoir has been favorably reviewed or covered in the New York Times, Associated Press, NPR, Mother Jones, CBS’ Sunday Morning, and the Tom Joyner Show. Not one of these media venues questioned the factual accuracy of memoir’s contents, although a number of significant factual errors would be evident to a journalism sophmore. So, in effect, straight out of the publication shoot Random House and Rideau’s media connections secured “instant media credibility” for the memoir. And had it not been for this website pointing out the irrefutable factual errors, the glaring fabrications, the obvious embellishments, and the countless misrepresentations, the memoir would have secured a place among the media as the “best ever prison memoir.”

            And my wife and I would have been etched permanently in the public record as the unsavory and unworthy individuals Rideau depicted us as in the memoir. With this website we have beyond any doubt revealed Wilbert Rideau as a literary thief and fraud—and not one person has been able to factually refute anything I have presented through this website about “the famed prison journalist.”

            Of course, Rideau’s supporters have heaped a mountain of verbal abuse upon me (all of which I have posted up on this website and responded to most of it). I have been labeled an envious and jealous malcontent and an angry and bitter racist who is actually “tearing at the fabric of the nation.” These supporters have charged that I am wasting my life and embarrassing my family and friends with the website. None of this could be further from the truth, but Rideau supporters have about as much respect for the truth as he does—and that’s not very much.

            I would agree with Rideau supporters on one point, however: this website has just about run its course. And I have been immensely pleased with its success—a success that was actually illustrated by one of Rideau’s supporters recently when she said she could not do any research about Rideau without coming across this website. That was the purpose for creating it and the reason why it will remain available on the Internet for those interested in researching Wilbert Rideau.

            The one basic fact Rideau supporters can’t seem to get through their head is that Rideau precipitated the need for this website in the first place. I was released from prison in April 2006. I got on down the road with my life. I did not attack Wilbert Rideau, either in media interviews or in a book as I could have done. I was content to live the rest of my life free of anything to do with Wilbert Rideau—until he published his memoir in which he deliberately and methodically chose to attack my wife and I with a laundry list of grievances and lies. He cast the die; he laid down the gauntlet.

            The fact is that, for all his intellect, Wilbert Rideau is a stupid man—one of the most stupid I ever met in my life. He was stupid in prison and apparently the free world has only aggravated the disease. All he had to do was publish his little memoir, leave me and my wife alone, and enjoy whatever literary success it brought him. But, no, he chose to use his memoir as a venue to not only attack us, but to lie about us in a perverse need to “get even” with us because of his petty imagined grievances. Now the “award-winning convict editor” must deal with the irrefutable charges presented through this website which have raised serious credibility questions about him well as his fraudulent memoir.

            I just wish that at least one of Rideau’s supporters could get beyond their need to criticize me and defend Rideau with proverbial “cold hard facts.” Show me where his memoir is not fabricated where I say it is; show me where he did not embellish events as I point out he did; or show me where the memoir is not factually flawed as I show it is. Refute these charges with facts and I will be more than happy to “shut up” and “get on with my life” as some of you have suggested.

            In the meantime, keep sending your comments. I will give them public expression. But your comments have about as much credibility as Rideau when you can’t support them with facts.

           In the May/June 2010 edition of Mother Jones, Wilbert Rideau was asked by Bruce Gilson: “What’s happened to the Angolite since you left?” Rideau responded: “While I was still there, they were clamping down on it. If you pick up the magazine now, there’s no controversy, there’s no criticism of the administration or anything that’s going on in the prison. There’s a whole about sports and religion. They’ll write about issues, but not about practices. Mostly it’s about religion. If you go by what you read and what you hear, Angola probably has the largest congregation of Christian prisoners in the world. I know prisoners. And prisoners, as a rule, when they’re out of prison are the most irreligious group of people in the world. So, when you tell me 70 percent of the prison population up at Angola are supposed to be Christian now because of this administrative push to turn the prison into a church house, I’ve got some questions! [laughs] That’s not to say there aren’t some religious prisoners. But the majority have never been, and whenever they get religion, it’s usually as a means to an end. It’s kind of a con job.”

            This paragraph reflects a lot about the true character of Wilbert Rideau. First, he downplayed the journalistic significance of The Angolite now that he is no longer its editor. The truth is that the prison publication has done quite well without Rideau. It was the recipient earlier this year of the Eleventh Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Special Award for its journalism endeavors, particularly in the area of the death penalty. Still, Rideau elected to take a cheap backhanded slap at its current staff by saying “there’s no criticism of the administration” in the publication.

           I challenge anyone to produce any article published in The Angolite by Wilbert Rideau that was critical of an “administration” during a time when that administration was ruling over the magazine. You won’t find any. Rideau had every opportunity when he was the magazine’s editor to criticize the administration of Angola Warden Burl Cain, but he didn’t have the balls to do it. He waited until after he was free to criticize Warden Cain in his memoir.

           Rideau could have easily given credit and recognition to the current staff of The Angolite for their Thurgood Marshall Award, particularly if they are working under the kind of pressure described by him, but the famed prison journalist has never been one willing to share success or give credit to others.

            Second, the former award-winning editor also questioned the sincerity of “the majority” of Christian inmates at Angola. He called their religious conversion a “con job.” There was no greater rehabilitation “con job” than the one perpetrated by Rideau when he continuously touted himself as “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner” during his 44-year incarceration. There’s no doubt that some of those Christian inmates are trying to ride the “religious pony” out of prison just as Rideau admitted that he rode The Angolite pony out of prison. The truth is that Rideau was the “most privileged inmate” in the history of the Louisiana prison system. His prison rehabilitation was as fraudulent as any of those Christian inmates who are faking their conversion to Christ.

            Okay. I know. I have been accused of trying to discredit the man. In fact, one of Rideau supporters recently said that if I didn’t stop all these negative posts about Rideau, someone was going to run off with my wife! Yep, that’s what’s “Nancy” said. Another Rideau supporter, “Stacy,” said she can’t even read anything about “Wilbert Rideaux” [sic] on the Internet without coming across this website. I guess Stacy does not understand the purpose of this website or any website. The objective is to drive traffic to it. Apparently it’s working for this site.

           But this website has not discredited Rideau any more than he tried to discredit a number of people with in his memoir. He used his memoir to “get even” with any and every one he believes wronged him in some way during his prison incarceration. If you don’t believe me, ask former Angola Wardens Ross Maggio and John Whitley, both of whom Rideau cast in a negative light and misrepresented what they said to him in his memoir. Put bluntly, the famed prison journalist lied about them! He fabricated scenes with the two wardens that did not happen!

            The media created the mythical image of Wilbert Rideau—one that was clearly evidenced in Mother Jones interview. The magazine gave him a forum to hype his memoir with little or no regard for the book’s factual accuracy. For example, Bruce Gilson stated that Rideau and The Angolite were “doing big exposes on the guards.” There was not one expose about prison guards in the magazine during Rideau’s tenure as its editor; however, there were numerous flattering articles about wardens, guards, and other penal administrators with whom the convict editor was currying favor with. Rideau and The Angolite participated in, and former Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps covered up, a massive criminal conspiracy that resulted in a Mississippi judge and his wife being murdered in Biloxi in September 1987. What about that for an expose!

            I have written that Rideau hogged all the credit in his memoir for the success of The Angolite. He did the same thing in the Mother Jones interview. “I guess in a lot of ways I was novel,” he told Gilson. “I used to often liken myself to a dog playing a piano, because here I am, I’m a prisoner and I’m doing all this journalism, I’m an editor. I wasn’t being censored. No other prisoner in America was able to do the same thing.”

            First, The Angolite was a censored publication. I was with the magazine for nine years. I know. Second, Rideau was not the “only prisoner in America” doing “award-winning” journalism. Every major journalism award on Rideau’s resume is also on mine. We were the “Woodward and Bernstein of prison journalism.”

            But I am pleased that Rideau’s supporters are concerned about my life, my wife, and that they cannot travel the Internet in search of the famed prison journalist without encountering articles from this website. I don’t know how to break it to Rideau’s supporters but a “public debate” is not about one party being able to express his or her views on a given subject. Rideau’s supporters would be content to hear only his point of view about every subject matter discussed in his memoir, but that will not happen. I have given voice to the “other side” of the Rideau debate, and if that makes me a “jealous and envious despicable person,” so be it. At least I’m telling the truth.

            Another Rideau supporter submitted a “comment” to this website. It is posted here. “The jealousy, envy, and hatred that spews from your articles are ‘victimizing’ society, ‘not WILBERT RIDEAU’. Individuals like yourself tear at the fabric of the nation!”

            I have dealt with the “jealousy, envy, and hatred” issues several times. No need to rehash them. But since “Saul” accuses me of “victimizing” society and charges that I am tearing “at the fabric of the nation,” I feel compelled to respond to his charges. I really didn’t know that telling the truth about Wilbert Rideau would subject me to an indictment of “victimizing” society by tearing at its very fabric—that’s comparable to being a threat to our national security.

            So, Saul, this post is for you: I will try once again put the “facts” straightforward in this public record for you. In 2005 Rideau announced to the public that he planned to write a memoir about his 44-year prison experience. The working title of the memoir was “The Truth Shall Set You Free.” In 2007 Rideau secured a $75,000 grant from the Soros Foundation to underwrite this literary endeavor. With that working title and $75,000 in the bank to make it happen, you would think the “famed prison journalist” would at least strive to give the reading public a truthful and factually accurate memoir. Instead, what society got with Rideau’s In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010) is a memoir riddled with factual errors, lies, fabrications, and embellishments. For the sake of literary integrity, Random House should recall the memoir because if anyone is “victimizing” society, it is Wilbert Rideau with In the Place of Justice. The following is a list of criticisms I have leveled at the memoir, not one of which has been refuted by Rideau or his supporters, including you Saul:

• Rideau tried to foster his cold blooded murder off as a manslaughter for which he was grossly over punished (here, here, here, here, here, here).
• Rideau’s memoir was so poorly written that the New York Times had to effectively apologize for it, calling it a “slow-moving weather system” (here).
• Rather than being a “victim of Southern racism” as he tried to present himself in the memoir, Rideau was the “most privileged inmate” in America (here, here).
• Rideau viciously maligned current Angola Warden Burl Cain, even to the point of suggesting that the warden had tried to have him killed (here).
• Rideau took cheap shots at Sister Helen Prejean, suggesting she was a novice who was used by prison reform activists against the interests of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (here).
• The memoir contains serious factual errors and misrepresentations that no “award-winning” journalist should make (here, here).
• Rideau hogged the all the credit for the journalistic success of The Angolite during our joint editorship with lies and misrepresentations (here).
• Rideau lied about and misrepresented the nature of his relationship with various state officials (here, here, here).
• Rideau lied about or embellished prison scenes about himself which did not happen (here, here),
• Rideau lied about and misrepresented historical events involving the Louisiana State Penitentiary and The Angolite to enhance his image of “power” (here, here, here)
• In The Place of Justice and Rideau personally violated the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (here, here, here)  

             Every post I have hyperlinked is factually accurate. Once again I challenge Saul or any of Rideau’s supporters to refute them. They cannot. If these posts, which reveal that Wilbert Rideau is a literary thief and fraud, somehow make me one of those “individuals” tearing “at the fabric of the nation,” then the fabric of this nation must be woven with lies, deceit, and misinformation. I did not create the myth of Wilbert Rideau; I did not transform him into a false idol. And I would have been just as content to let that myth exist just like Santa Claus had Rideau not so viciously attack my wife and I with lies and misrepresentations in his self-serving memoir.

            So excuse me, Saul: if someone kicks me in the ass, I am going to try to break his foot. Ergo, the moral of this story is that Rideau should have kept his foot in his mouth and out of my ass.

          The Angolite, the official inmate publication of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, has been the recipient of some of the nation’s most prestigious journalism awards. Famed prison journalist Wilbert Rideau became its editor in 1975. I was a member of the staff from 1977 to 1986—as a staff writer, associate editor, and finally a co-editor. During that nine-year period, Rideau and I were the individual recipients of 1979 George Polk Award and the 1979 and 1980 ABA Silver Gavel Awards. The magazine, through our joint efforts, received the 1979 Robert F. Kennedy Award and the 1981 Sidney Hillman Award.

            Through this critically acclaimed era, The Angolite was touted as the only “free penal press” in America enjoying unlimited powers to investigate and report about the realities of the world behind bars. I recently read a 2009 Associated Press account about the San Quentin News, the inmate publication of that maximum security California prison. The report cited the growing interest and success in the publication, particularly in the inmate community at the prison. The report made me think back to the early days when the Rideau/Sinclair writing team transformed The Angolite from a publication much like the San Quentin News is today into an internationally respected voice in prison journalism.

            But was The Angolite truly a “free penal press?” (A concept that garnered a $75,000 grant from the Soros Foundation to Rideau’s wife, Dr. Linda Labranche, to produce—a four-year-old project yet to be completed.)

            No. But the concept made a great story, particularly for liberal media giants like The New York Times which became enthralled with the prospect that a black inmate in a southern prison could singlehandedly (if you listen to Rideau’s accounts) establish the nation’s first truly free penal press. Rideau quickly realized that his key to success and acclaim lay with perpetuating that image of an uneducated, deprived black man waging an endless struggle against a racist prison system with the “power of the pen.” Liberal reporters swooned.

            The Angolite beyond a doubt enjoyed more freedom than other prison publications – but there is no such beast as a “free penal press.” We were able to write about issues—sexual violence, suicide, murder, the death penalty—in ways not normally associated with prison publications, and, yes, in that sense The Angolite was unique. But every issue we wrote about in the magazine, in one way or another, served the interests of the prison administration. They wanted the “story out.” That’s why they let us write about them.

            But when we touched on any issue that involved possible official corruption or wrongdoing we were told in no uncertain terms that the issue was “off limits.” In effect, The Angolite’s freedom ended where the prison administration’s nose began. In his memoir, Rideau would have readers believe the prison publication was such a force within the system that it could dictate the state’s methods of execution and reduce a sitting governor and federal judge to sniveling cowards. Bullshit.

            The Angolite was, and remains, a top of the line prison publication. The fact that the publication has survived the Rideau era and continues to produce worthy journalism in a prison setting speaks volumes. But it is not now, nor has it ever been, a “free penal press.” Prison is a violent and corrupt world—even the best of them are afflicted with the daily wrongdoing. There is nothing honest, true or decent about the caged world of prison—not even its penal publications, The Angolite included. A true free penal press would survive in prison about as long as Keith Olbermann’s Countdown would survive on Fox News.

            There’s a saying in Texas, “you leave the dance with who brung ya’.” The Louisiana prison system took Rideau and I to the dance and we did the Texas Two-Step to their music. We all had enough sense to realize that we had a vested interest in promoting the myth of a free penal press. Former Louisiana Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps once asked me why I had not brought the information I had about a corrupt pardons-selling scheme to him instead reporting it to the FBI and I responded: “You would have buried me under one of those cellblocks if I had given it to you.”  There’s no way the corrections secretary would have let me report that corruption in The Angolite, especially with the magazine being knee-deep in it and the corruption going all the way to the Governor’s Office.

            Those who read, and believe, Rideau’s memoir, In the Place of Justice (Random House 2010), will find this post hard to believe. But I ask them: what shocking revelations did the famed prison journalist’s memoir reveal? None. It is poorly written and factually flawed. In a sophomoric way, the memoir intimates that Angola Warden Burl Cain may have once put in place a plot to kill the former editor and that Sister Helen Prejean is a naïve person easily manipulated by prison reform groups. That’s about the best the darling of the The New York Times could produce. It’s so sad. I must stop now. I am about to shed a “tear in my beer.”

          That’s what we were called, Wilbert Rideau and I—the “Woodward and Bernstein” of prison journalism. I don’t really know when the analogy was made, or by whom. But for a brief three year period, 1979 through 1981, Rideau and I became media sensations as we captured some of the nation’s most prestigious journalism awards: the Robert F. Kennedy Special Journalism Award, the George Polk Award, the Sidney Hillman Award, and two ABA Silver Gavel Awards. We transformed The Angolite, the official inmate publication of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, from a “prison rag” into an influential voice in the American criminal justice system. It was no minor achievement.

            But, as so often is the case, professional success leads to personal failure. The “salt and pepper” writing team fell apart. There is always enough blame to spread around for failed relationships, professional and personal. The failed Rideau/Sinclair relationship is no different. We both bear responsibility for its failure. Rideau has used his recent memoir, In the Place of Justice (Random House 2010), to put forth his reasons for the failure. He pointed the blame finger at me while simultaneously hogging the lion’s share of credit for the success of The Angolite. And that’s has always been a professional rub for me: Rideau’s insatiable desire to “hog the credit” in every life situation. Sharing success is not one of his strong suits.

            That’s why I have a few tidbits I would like to add to the public debate on this fading issue which, I admit, has become totally irrelevant. But I did pay for this website and it is my forum of expression when it comes to Wilbert Rideau. No one is forced to read it, much less care about what it says. But, anyway, I was recently doing some research (unrelated to this website) and came across Rideau’s Wikipedia page. Any responsible researcher knows that information contained on Wikipedia pages must be considered with serious skepticism. And that’s certainly true about the Rideau page. It contains the following inaccurate and false information:

          “Rideau became known for his exposes of prison life and won some of journalism’s most prized awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the George Polk Award, and the Sidney Hillman Award. He was the first prisoner ever to win the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, for which it was nominated seven times. Rideau was credited with helping bring peace and reform to what had been called “the bloodiest prison in America’ in the 1970s.”

            First, Rideau did not win either the Kennedy or Hillman awards. These awards were bestowed upon The Angolite—the Kennedy in 1979 and Hillman in 1981. The Kennedy award was based upon three editions of the prison magazine, two of which I contributed the lead articles. The Hillman award was based on one feature story, Louisiana Death Watch, which appeared in the prison magazine in 1980. I wrote every single word of that article. But Rideau, and his supporters, have consistently attributed these two prestigious journalism awards solely the former convict editor.

          Does that stick in my craw? You bet’cha! Who would want some else to get credit for their work? Rightfully, these two awards belong to The Angolite—not to either me or Rideau.  They were given to the magazine. We were individual recipients of the 1979 Polk award and the 1979/80 ABA Silver Gavel Awards. But Rideau has always assumed that since he was the lead editor of the magazine, he was entitled to claim personal credit for all the awards bestowed upon it. I don’t think so—and because I don’t think so and have taken him to task for doing so, many of his supporters have accused me of being envious and jealous of his success which, in part, has been based upon him stealing credit for my work as evidenced by his consistent habit of taking sole credit for the Kennedy/Hillman awards. Just like in the Rideau Wikipedia page.

          Second, the Rideau Wikipedia page says Rideau was the “first prisoner ever” to win the ABA Silver Gavel Award. That’s correct, as far as it goes. Rideau captured the award in 1979 and I won the award in 1980. But the implication is that Rideau did something extraordinary or special by being the “first prisoner ever” to win the award. I guess the “second prisoner ever” to win the award is somehow diminished by comparison.

          Third, the Rideau Wikipedia page says Rideau has been “credited” with helping to “bring peace and reform to what had been called ‘the bloodiest prison in America’ in the 1970s.” This past June David Oshinksy, a professor of history at the University of Texas and New York University, took this false bait and repeated it in a New York Times review of Rideau’s memoir. It’s hard to say where the misinformation about Rideau being “credited” with helping bring “peace and reform” to “the bloodiest prison in America” got started but no credible person in the Louisiana criminal justice system, much less the state’s prison system, has ever “credited” Rideau with bringing “peace and reform” to the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The convict editor had absolutely nothing to do with bringing “peace and reform” to the prison in 1977 when Warden Ross Maggio transformed it from the “bloodiest prison in the nation” into one of the safest.

          Wilbert Rideau has historically—as he repeatedly did in his memoir—taken credit for changes at Angola for which he had absolutely no involvement. That’s why I’ve called him a “spin doctor.” The truth is that Rideau, and The Angolite, stood in the way of “reform” at the prison because he had a vested interest in maintaining the corrupt status quo that allowed him to enjoy so many special privileges. Rideau had as much to do with “peace and reform” at Angola as Pol Pot had to do with human rights in Cambodia.

             In response to my post about Wilbert Rideau’s knowledge about a massive pardons-selling operation at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1986, Sallay Robertson offered the following thoughtful comments that invite discussion:

            “Maybe the reason Wilbert Rideau let it happen (the pardons-selling) is because he felt ending the scheme would betray other prisoners who have no way to go free.

            “There have been individuals and groups who feel it is moral to help their friends and family, and ‘cheating’ (anything from using cheating devices to pass driving tests, to lying about ages and family status, etc) and that it is immoral to not help friends and family.

            “I saw a YouTube comment that harshly criticized Billy Sinclair for ending the scheme precisely for this reason. In the BookTV vido ‘Book TV: Jodie and Billy Wayne Sinclair ‘Capital Punishment’ INTLFA 2009 exhibited that mindset.

            “Having said that I agree that the pardons should have been stopped. Indeed the state should be considering smarter sentencing laws so it releases people who have a good chance of being rehabilitated.”

            Sallay Robertson suggests that Rideau may have had a sense of loyalty toward the prisoners who corrupted the process and bought pardons. That premise is wrong. The inmates who were given an opportunity to buy a pardon (and who did so) were part of the criminal element in the prison community. Inmates who deserved executive clemency, those who were truly rehabilitated, were not given an opportunity to join the “criminal conspiracy” because they posed of threat of exposure (they were considered potential “snitches”). Thus, it was the incorrigible criminals—many of whom were drug dealers and members of the infamous Dixie Mafia—who had the financial means to buy a pardon. Some of those inmates were such low lifes that they sent their wives, sisters, and even mothers to the pardon board office to screw the chairman in his office to “seal the deal.”

            No, the harsh reality (perhaps an unwelcomed one by his supporters) is that Wilbert Rideau did not expose the pardons selling scheme for one reason: he had a personal vested interest in pardon board chairman Howard Marsellus who had promised to help the convict editor get a clemency recommendation. Rideau would have protected Marsellus even if the chairman had been selling a pardon to Charles Manson.

            Sallay assumes (as do many people who do not know him personally) that Wilbert Rideau had (or even has) a capacity for loyalty. I knew Rideau up close and personal for more than a decade. Loyalty to others was not one of his sterling character traits. Let me illustrate this point. He met a news reporter who developed a personal interest in him. In fact, she became emotionally involved with the convict editor, to the point that she was willing to risk her career for him. But then she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Rideau abruptly kicked her out of his life, telling her that he did not have “the time to deal with her problems.” In other words, she was no longer of any use to him so he threw her to the curb like you would a piece of trash. That is the real Wilbert Rideau.

            Secondly, I believe in friend and family loyalty. But loyalty is neither a license nor a duty to join a love one in some “cheating” or “criminal” endeavor. People who lie, cheat and steal have no moral right to impose upon the loyalty of family members or friends a request for support or help in wrongdoing. An offer of wrongdoing (as the one presented to me in 1986) creates three options: accept the wrongdoing offer, report it, or ignore it. Two of those options are inherently criminal. There is only one responsible response: report the wrongdoing.

            Of course, I have been harshly and bitterly criticized (by Wilbert Rideau and The New York Times, both of whom called me a “snitch”) because I reported the “pardons selling” corruption.  I am in fact a “snitch” but only to those who would have exercised either of the other two options: accept the wrongdoing or ignore it. I suppose the illustrious The New York Times felt I should have ignored the wrongdoing while Rideau felt I should have bought a pardon as he would have done given the opportunity.

            But I pose these questions: What kind of man and husband would I have been had I suggested to, and encouraged, my wife to come up with the money to buy the pardon? I would probably have been a free man in 1986 had I paid the up front $15,000 and a back end payment of $5,000. I spent twenty more years in prison because I didn’t pay the money—twelve of those years with the Edwin Edwards political machine exacting terrible vengeance against my wife and I because we exposed their corruption. That’s why I said during the BookTV filming of a book signing in 2009 that I am not sure this day if I could, or would, do the same thing again. The price for our honesty was tremendously high.

            But in the clutch when it was time to step up the plate I did the right thing. I was telling anyone who would listen in 1986 that after twenty years of incarceration I was truly “rehabilitated.” I proved it in 1986 and proved it time and again over the next twenty years before I was finally paroled out of the Louisiana prison system in 2006.

            The bottom line is this: the pardons selling scheme was set up by criminals, it was fueled by criminals, and it was protected by criminals. Nothing will ever justify the harm that criminal enterprise did to the legitimate aspirations of the Louisiana clemency process.

           During his fourth murder trial conducted in Lake Charles, Louisiana in January 2005, famed prison journalist Wilbert Rideau faced an “aggressive cross examination” from Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant. The District Attorney was able to elicit some incriminating facts from the former prison editor that apparently did not register with the jury which rejected the state’s cold blooded murder theory and instead found the killer guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. These incriminating facts are nonetheless relevant to the public debate Rideau has generated with his recently released memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), in which he tries to convince the public that he did not intend to murder Julia Ferguson, Dora McCain, and Jay Hickman—the three bank employees he kidnapped on February 16, 1961 and took to a remote area in Calcasieu Parish where he killed Ferguson and seriously wounded McCain and Hickman.

            “I was 19 years old,” Rideau said, describing the crime. “It was ill-conceived. It was dumb.”

            19 years of age! Most people age 19 in 1961 could purchase liquor (and Rideau by his own admission was a frequent patron of local honky-tonks); could enlist in the military; could obtain a driver’s license; and, mostly importantly, could be tried as an “adult” for a crime. Clearly age did not diminish Rideau’s ability to reason, to make rational decisions, or to make informed choices.

            But what is more interesting (and certainly more telling) is Rideau’s observation that the decision to rob the Gulf South National Bank and take the three employees hostage was “ill-conceived” and “dumb.” He didn’t say the crime was “wrong;” only that it was “ill-conceived” and “dumb.” Only a sociopath would view the robbery of a bank, the kidnapping of three bank employees, the killing of one, and attempted killing of the other two as “ill-conceived” and “dumb.”

            What Rideau was actually saying is that he should have been “smarter” in the way he “conceived” the plot to rob the bank and kill off all the employees because they knew and could identify him.

            This assertion is given credence by the following exchange between the award-winning inmate journalist and Bryant.

            “You admit you murdered Julia Ferguson? Bryant asked.

            “I killed her, yes,” Rideau answered.

            Bryant then asked Rideau the difference between the two.

            “I didn’t intend to harm any of those people,” Rideau said.

            “You admit that you committed a homicide, but not a murder?” Bryant asked.

            “Yes,” Rideau replied.

            “In your mind it’s not a murder because it was not premeditated,” Bryant said.

            “Right,” Rideau answered.

            In his memoir Rideau said he panicked inside the bank when he learned the police were en route there. He decided to take Ferguson, McCain and Hickman hostage because he did not have time to tie them up and leave them unharmed in the bank as he initially planned. The famed prison journalist did not tell us how he had planned to tie up the three employees. He did not bring any rope or tape with him. He simply brought the murder weapons, a gun and a knife, and a suitcase to haul off the loot.

            Instead of just leaving the employees in the bank, Rideau decided to take them to the remote area near English Bayou with every intention of turning them loose and allowing them to walk back to town (he said). But when McCain and Hickman tried to escape immediately after arriving at the bayou, Rideau lamented that “everything [went] to hell” and “the gun went off, unintentionally or not—I didn’t know which. Everything happened very fast … like a blur. Hickman ran, 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.”

            “[And] what did you think would happen to [Julia Ferguson],” Bryant asked Rideau during the cross examination, “what did you think would happen when you stabbed a middle aged woman in the chest?”

            Rideau knew precisely what would happen. The statement that he stabbed Ferguson “on panic and impulse” is sheer bullshit! Why did he try to slit the middle aged woman’s throat then? His defense team managed to downplay the throat wound by depicting it as nothing more than a superficial cut. The nature of the wound has never been the issue. The issue is the “intent” behind inflicting it. Rideau admits to stabbing Ferguson in the chest, although he says it was “on panic and impulse.” And I assume he believes everyone should accept that he also cut the woman’s throat on “impulse” as well? A person does not cut someone’s throat either in “panic” or on “impulse.” Slitting someone’s throat has always been, and always will be, a sure sign of premeditation to kill. It makes no difference if Rideau inflicted a minor or a major wound to Ferguson’s throat. What matters is that he tried to cut her throat for the only reason anyone cuts someone’s throat: to make sure she was dead.

            Rideau also said he emptied the gun at the fleeing McCain and Hickman. That was the initial act of violence. Why did he even shoot at them to begin with if he truly planned to turn them loose? If he had not shot at them, there would have been no need to run over and stab Ferguson as he claims.

            Those two decisions—the shooting at McCain/Hickman and the cutting of Ferguson’s throat—will always be the death knell on Rideau’s “panic and impulse” defense. The jury may have bought the defense because it did not want to send him back to prison with a life sentence, but that does not mean the public must accept either the jury’s verdict or the “panic and impulse” defense reiterated in the memoir that the famed prison journalist committed a manslaughter and not a murder.

          The one thing I can depend upon when I receive “comments” (all of which I post up) from Wilbert Rideau’s supporters is that they will give me an issue to blog about. The latest comments is from a gentleman named Milagros Garcia Villamil from the illustrious island of Cuba where human poverty and misery reign supreme because of the “great revolution.” Mr. Villamil, in a very inarticulate manner, states that Rideau has given all of his associates and students a “burst of hope.” He also said I should “move on” and that no one cares about what I have to say about the former “famed prison journalist.” He’s probably right, but he cared enough to send me his comments criticizing my efforts to enlighten the public about the real Wilbert Rideau.

            I have no problem with “whistling in the dark” or “wandering aimlessly in the wilderness.” I do not write for a newspaper, a magazine, or work for any other news outlet. I paid with my own money—money earned from working and not given to me as charity from the Soros Foundation—to have this website constructed and pay to maintain it. Thus, I have absolute control over its editorial content. I am free to write whatever I please. I have one self-imposed restraint—that my blogs be factually accurate, and when an opinion is expressed in one of them that it be an informed one. No one has yet factually refuted any of the facts I have presented about Wilbert Rideau and his memoir through this website.

            Mr.Villamil couldn’t refute the facts either. He resorted to the same tactics as other Rideau supporters who have submitted comments. He attacked my character. He called me a “snitch” and a “whiner.” I have this hunch, although I am not certain, that the truth sounds like whining to people who keep their heads buried in the sand to avoid reality. I suspect that Mr. Villamil is one of those Cubans who still believe that the “revolution” will one day deliver on its promises.

            Now, about this “snitching” thing. Did I in 1986 expose to federal authorities the existence of a massive pardons-selling operation in the Louisiana State Penitentiary? Yes, I did. It is something I am quite proud of. I was the only inmate with the balls to stand up against corruption. The rest of the inmates who knew about the corruption did one of three things: paid the money for a corrupt pardon, tried to pay the money for a corrupt pardon, or kept their mouth shut.

            And what did Wilbert Rideau, the famed prison journalist, do? He knew about the pardons selling. As a celebrated, award-winning journalist, why didn’t he investigate it and try to expose it? I will tell you why. He couldn’t do that because he was too deeply involved with the corruption. Pardon board chairman Howard Marsellus (who was sent to a federal slammer for his role in the corruption) promised Rideau a pardon. He used Rideau as a conduit to gather information about and to pass information along to inmates involved in the chairman’s corrupt network. Rideau also used his position as editor of The Angolite to broker a pardon for Leonard Pourciau, prison publication’s graphic artist, in exchange for Pourciau painting a portrait of the pardon board chairman.

            What support do I have for this charge? In the wake of the pardon-selling scandal, Rideau wrote in The Angolite and said in various media interviews that the prison publication was not involved in the scandal and that he had no personal knowledge about it. He repeated the same general position in his memoir. On the one hand, Rideau repeatedly states or implies in his memoir that he was the most powerful inmate in the state prison system; that he knew everything that went on inside Angola, at both the inmate and free personnel level. Yet he tries to feign “ignorance” about the largest pardons-selling operation in the history of the state operating right under his nose, so close in fact that a member of his own staff bought a corrupt pardon.

            As a matter of fact, Rideau barely discussed the pardon-selling scandal in his memoir—and did not even mention anything about Pourciau buying a pardon—because he was too deeply involved in that whole corrupt affair and didn’t think there was anything morally or legally wrong with it. And it’s terribly ironic that the convict editor somehow managed to sell the notion to The New York Times and other respectable media organizations that I violated my journalistic ethics because I “snitched” on the corruption while he not only concealed but participated in the corruption.

            And now, Mr. Villamil, you have the audacity to sit on that third world island “down there” and belittle me as a “snitch” while simultaneously blowing praises up Rideau’s south end. Thank you, sir. You made my day—and, yes, as my photo suggests, the hours in my life are growing fewer. But you can take this to the bank, Mr. Villamil: there are a lot of things I am not proud of in my life, but I am proud of the final product the sum of my life experiences produced, including “snitching” out the pardons selling operation. And coming from individuals like you who apparently feel there is some character flaw about “snitching,” let me say I wear your personal condemnation as a badge of honor. I don’t subscribe to the ghetto-bred, and prison honored, belief system that “snitching” is a bad thing. More often than not, snitching means doing the right thing under difficult circumstances—and if you believe that standing up to bad things is somehow a “betrayal,” then I dare you to rationally and logically explain what that betrayal is.

            But to take this issue down to your gutter level, I will close with this caveat: if you’re doing wrong and you don’t want the Man in your business, then don’t let me see or know about your wrongdoing. To paraphrase Antoine Dotson, I will run and tell that, homeboy!

          I have been asked on several occasions, “why do you keep the Rideau site going?”

          Wilbert Rideau supporters certainly don’t like it, and more often than not, I find it an inconvenient task to keep pounding away with the new posts. Then I read something like Seymour Morris, Jr.’s review on Amazon of Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), and I am reinforced with the certainty that this site serves a legitimate purpose. Mr. Morris, who knows nothing about prisons and even less about Wilbert Rideau, called In the Place of Justice “probably the best prison memoir ever written.” Since Morris did not enlighten us as to how many prison memoirs he has read or which ones, I will take that assessment as hyperbole of the misinformed.

            How could Mr. Morris possibly think his review could be taken seriously when he begins it with the asinine observation that Rideau should have served ten and one-half years in the Louisiana prison system rather than the 44 years he actually served? Clearly, Mr. Morris does not understand one single thing about Rideau’s crime. For example, he does not know how many crimes Rideau committed on February 16, 1961; how coldblooded and heinous were the acts of violence he perpetrated that day; or just how well-planned his crimes were, including their violent aftermath.

            As for his review of the memoir itself, Mr. Morris was apparently seized by some kind of intellectual masturbation as he described In The Place of Justice as “amazing,” “very well-written,” “rich in insights,” and “provocative.” He added that the book cannot be “read in one setting” and should be considered only by “the thoughtful reader.” Apparently that’s because, as New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner’s put it, the last half of the memoir reads like a “[slow]-moving weather system” not made for “provocative reading”—so much so that “not even a dandy cameo by Johnnie Cochran … [could] bring this section to life.”

            I should point out to Mr. Morris that beyond its very limited literary value that not even a favorable reviewer like Mr. Garner who did everything he could to justify Rideau’s criminal actions and apologize for his literary ineptitude could salvage, the memoir, in reality, is soiled with infantile-like personal embellishments (here, here, here, here,); serious factual errors no respectful journalist would make (here, here, here,); self-aggrandizing misrepresentations (here, here, here, here, here,); and unethical fabrications so serious Random House should recall it (here, here, here,)—all of which have been indisputably documented on this “real story” website.

            If Wilbert Rideau or any of his apologists like Mr. Morris can factually refute the claims set forth in any of the posts on this website, I will shut it down. The simple fact is that Wilbert Rideau, the famed prison journalist, is a literary thief and his memoir is a literary fraud. And so long as naïve readers like Mr. Morris continue to post “reviews” like “I don’t mean to be facetious, but this book should be mandatory reading for every kid in high school (among others),” I will continue to educate the public through this website about In The Place of Justice and its author.

            Do I have a personal interest at stake? You bet’cha. The memoir attacks my wife and I with malicious lies and vicious misrepresentations. We had successfully moved on from that horrible Louisiana past—until Rideau decided to resurrect it with his petty “get even” memoir that took him five years to manufacture. When I was in the Louisiana prison system and denied access to the media while Rideau enjoyed unlimited access to it, I could not defend myself from his character attacks on me. But today I can defend not only myself and my wife but the public record as well from this pathological liar.

            Do I have a personal bias against my former co-editor and writing partner? You better believe it. He has continuously enhanced both his career and reputation as a “famed prison journalist” stealing my work and passing my ideas off as his own.

            Do either of these factors influence the information presented on this website. No. I admit there are times when I mix my personal disdain for Rideau in some of the posts with the information being presented in them. But the issue is not my disdain. The issue is whether the information being presented is factual and accurate. It is. No one has stepped forward to factually refute it. Some of Rideau’s supporters have assailed me with personal attacks but they were unable to refute the information presented through this website. They were just pissed that I presented the information that undermined their misinformed support for the famed prison journalist.

            Let me close this post with this final observation. Mr. Morris said Rideau’s memoir “is rich in insights.” He then lists seven of those “insights.” I challenge anyone to read those “insights”—all of which have been expressed by many other writers in many different forums—and conclude that they are uniquely “rich.” The only richness in them lies in Mr. Morris’ head.

           Reading the very first chapter of Wilbert Rideau’s memoir, In the Place of Justice (Random House 2010), I knew it was going to be a proverbial “long day” wading through the manure he had spread out over the field of an embellished and manufactured life. On pages 26 and 27 of that chapter titled “Ruination,” Rideau described two scenes remarkably similar to ones I described  in my memoir published ten years earlier: A Life In the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story  (Arcade Publishing, New York 2000), co-authored with my wife, Jodie Sinclair.

            First, Rideau described the cell he was placed in at the Calcasieu Parish Jail shortly after his arrest in 1961: “In the days that followed, a parade of white men, some well dressed, some not, some cops, entered the hallway periodically to stand in front of the cell and stare at time, sometimes silently, sometimes talking to each other about me, other times cursing and telling me how many different ways they wanted to kill me. I stared back, saying nothing. What could I say.”

            The following is a description from Balance of my first days in a cell in the East Baton Rouge Parish jail in 1965 where, incidentally, Rideau was housed in the adjoining cell: “For the first days, the jailers brought people to the cell at all hours to peer at some. Some were in police uniforms, others in civilian clothes. They cursed, threatened, and even spat at me through the food slot situated in the middle of the steel door. I cursed back, staring defiantly at the hate-filled faces.”

            I don’t know if Rideau’s jail experience occurred. I do know mine did, and Rideau was a witness to it. As a matter of fact on page 148 of his memoir Rideau supports the harsh treatment administered to me by jail officials. “I first met Billy in 1965, when he was a tall, skinny twenty-four year (actually I was only 20 years of age, not 24 as the award-winning journalist tried to portray me in order to make me appear as a more hardened, experienced criminal) who was shoved by angry deputies into the Hole near me behind the booking desk of the East Baton Rouge Parish jail … Hostile deputies perpetrated numerous little cruelties to make his stay in the Hole tough, like leaving his bright overhead light on even at night, so he couldn’t sleep.”

            Second, Rideau described a scene where his father came to see him in that cell shortly after his arrest: “’You sonuvabitch!’ he erupted, his body shaking. ‘You no son of mine. I raised my children to do right. You nothing to me. You an animal, a mad dog. They say they gonna  electrocute you, and I hope they do, ‘cuz you a beast. If I had a gun right now, I’d shoot you myself.’”

            The following is a description from Balance about what my father said as the FBI led me away from his place of employment when they arrested me: “As the FBI led me away, I heard the last words John (my father) would speak to me: ‘I hope they put you in the electric chair.’”

            Perhaps Rideau’s father was as shitty and sorry as mine. He seemed like a pretty nasty dude based on what the famed prison journalist said about him. But it struck me as peculiar that during the ten years I knew Wilbert Rideau up close he never mentioned either the jail treatment or his father’s visceral reaction—particularly when he was so fascinated after I told him about my father calling the FBI on me and saying he hoped they electrocuted me. “You’re ole man was a cold dude,” he would say.

            Stealing other people’s ideas and work has never been a problem with Wilbert Rideau. And embellishment of life events is one of his favorite literary tactics. The third, and final, episode in “Ruination” concerns one of his crime victims: Jay Hickman, the Gulf South National Bank vice president in 1961. Rideau robbed the man, took him hostage (along with two female bank employees), drove him to a remote location, and tried to kill him. Then the convicted killer said that one of his first court-appointed attorneys, a gentleman named James A. Leithead (who is conveniently dead), believed, like many others, that “Hickman, the nephew of the city’s mayor, had a hand in the robbery. I had been grilled by interrogators, especially the FBI, about that; they made the suggestion that it would go easier on me if I said Hickman was the person behind it all. I insisted he was a victim.”

            Once again Rideau never shared that part of the “bank story” with me, and he shared its most intimate details with me during that worst decade of my life when I had the misfortune of knowing the man. Again, conveniently for the former “nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner,” Hickman is dead, Liethead is dead, and while he didn’t name his “interrogators,” it can reasonably be assumed that most or all of them are dead as well. So he could easily malign Hickman’s character while simultaneously creating that “possibility” he was not the sole person behind the horrific robbery/murder. Why would the local police, much less the FBI, think that Hickman, the nephew of Lake Charles’ mayor, would join with a “skinny colored kid” (as Rideau described himself) to plan and carry out such a crime? It defies the normal bounds of logic, but as with so many of Rideau’s infantile embellishments in his memoir, the famed prison journalist was not guided by either logic or truth during the five years it took him to produce the memoir. Perhaps it took five years to weave so many lies out of a single thread of truth.