Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

          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.

           I have presented through this site indisputable, undeniable evidence that Wilbert Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), is a literary fraud chocked full of fabrications, factual errors, and misrepresentations. The truth has never been, and will never be, enough for the former “famed prison journalist.” He has an incurable propensity to take a kernel of corn and present it as a bushel he personally harvested. And some of the nation’s most respected journalists and historians have aided and abetted in perpetuating the myth that Rideau, during his award-winning tenure as editor of The Angolite, somehow transformed the infamous “Angola prison” from the “bloodiest prison in America” into a showcase of modern penology.

            Nothing could be further from the truth. Wilbert Rideau is a media con artist. Let me support this harsh assessment with a perfect illustration. In chapter 10 of his memoir, titled “Hope,” Rideau wrote about the difference of executions by the electric chair and lethal injection. The staff of the prison magazine had secured photos of inmates put to death in electric chairs in Florida and Louisiana, including some taken of Robert Wayne Williams who was put to death in Louisiana’s electric chair in 1983. Rideau, and his co-editor Ron Wikberg, convinced Angola Warden John Whitley to allow the prison “newsmagazine” to publish the photos in an upcoming edition. At the time a New Orleans-based anti-death penalty group had filed a legal challenge to the continued use of the electric chair because the device was “defective” and its use amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

            The Louisiana Legislature in the spring/summer of 1990 amended the state’s statute governing the method of execution announcing its intention to change the method of execution from electrocution to lethal injection. In 1991 the state formally changed its method of execution with an amendment that provided all inmates sentenced to death prior to September 15, 1991 would be put to death by electrocution and those sentenced to death after September 15, 1991 would be put to death by lethal injection. The language of the statute remains the same today.

            Rideau said The Angolite’s proposed intention to publish the post-mortem photos of Robert Wayne Williams stirred considerable controversy within the Louisiana corrections department. I do not doubt that. The photos were published in the September/October 1990 edition of The Angolite and, according to Rideau, produced the following reaction: “The photos of Williams, the medical diagnosis of his burns, and the conclusions of expert electrical engineers that Louisiana’s electric chair was defective made news throughout the state. It was out hottest, fastest selling magazine ever. Everyone wanted to see what an electrocuted person looked like, it seemed.”

            I cannot factually dispute Rideau’s claim that the story “made news throughout the state.” I was housed at the Louisiana State Police Barracks in 1990 and stayed abreast of all state and local news. I don’t recall any major media event associated with the publication of the photos. A Google search does not produce any “hits” about such coverage. Thus, given Rideau’s propensity for embellishment, I question whether the publication of the Williams photos “made news throughout the state” but I cannot factually refute it.

            As for that particular edition of The Angolite being the “hottest, fastest selling magazine ever,” that’s another Rideau fabrication. The prison newsmagazine was a subscriber-only publication. It was not on “newsstands” around the state for public sale. The Angolite at that time probably had no more than 2,000 subscribers with many of those being “complimentary” subscriptions. Further, there’s no way that particular edition could have been the “hottest, fastest selling [edition] ever” because the prison’s print shop printed a fix number of copies each edition. The copies not mailed to subscribers were distributed “free” to the general inmate population. Thus, the “hottest, fastest selling magazine ever” claim is just another Rideau lie.        

            Beyond this obvious fabrication, there are two distinct misrepresentations associated with the event in the memoir. The first involves Rideau attending a pardon board hearing for death row inmate Robert Sawyer. The New Orleans anti-death penalty group was trying to get Sawyer’s scheduled execution delayed until the legal issues surrounding the continued use of the electric chair were resolved. Rideau wrote that during a break in the pardon board session, “board member Sally McKissack” walked up to him and asked: “You heard what we’ve heard. What would you do?”

            Rideau, the “solution man,” replied: “Sarah and Nick (the death penalty people) have already filed this issue in court. Having seen the pictures, I’d find a reason to dodge this execution, because if something goes wrong with it after you’ve refused to hear their complaint, you’re going to catch flak from everywhere. But you know that.”

            Rideau’s memoir recounts episode after episode where he was called upon to advise wardens, prison officials, politicians, and educators on how to effectively deal with crises affecting their positions. It quite literally boggles the mind, much less the normal bounds of logic, to believe that a member of the Louisiana pardon board would walk up to a convicted murderer, albeit an “award-winning” one, and ask him how the pardon board should handle a particular case. It makes a rational mind seize up with shock to realize that many of the nation’s prominent journalists actually believe this kind of crap—a claim that cannot be proven because Sally McKissack is conveniently dead.

            The second misrepresentation was that in the wake of the publication of the Williams death photos, the Louisiana corrections department “without acknowledging anything was wrong with the electric chair, announced it would ask the legislature to mandate that the present death row population be executed by lethal injection.”

            The corrections department I’m sure made such a recommendation, but the obvious implication by Rideau that the agency did so in response to The Angolite’s publication of the Williams death photos is a stretch, to say the least. The Louisiana Legislature at the time was already in the process of preparing to switch from electrocution to lethal injection as the state’s method of execution. The corrections department’s recommendation was made in conjunction with that legislative process, not The Angolite.

            In a YouTube video about the need to end prison censorship, Rideau takes this misrepresentation to step further by claiming that The Angolite was responsible for forcing the State of Louisiana “to change” its method of execution. That is just an outright lie, one so typical of Wilbert Rideau. The legislature’s decision to change the state’s method of execution had nothing to do with either The Angolite in general or its “award-winning editor” personally. And the other “changes” Rideau attributes to The Angolite in the YouTube video are either blatant lies (like changing the culture of rape at Angola) or misrepresentations (like changing the delivery of health care to inmates throughout the state’s penal system).

            Wilbert Rideau is an incurable liar. An objective analysis or a serious fact-checking of his memoir by any responsible researcher or journalist would produce the same conclusion.

          The crime of Wilbert Rideau was horrific, no matter how his supporters try to color it. On February 16, 1961 he robbed the Gulf South National Bank in Lake Charles, Louisiana; took three bank employees hostage (two female tellers and a male vice president); took the hostages to a remote area in Calcasieu Parish; grievously wounded two of the hostages as they tried to flee for their lives; and killed the third employee by stabbing her through the heart and cutting her throat. By Rideau’s own admission, it was a senseless, coldblooded, and methodical “hate crime” murder.

            On April 17, 1972 a group of black inmates on the Big Yard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary walked into Pine 1 dormitory and stabbed a prison guard named Brent Miller 32 times killing him. Four inmates were arrested for the murder: Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, Chester “Noxema Black” Jackson, and Gilbert Montegut. Jackson took a plea deal to a lesser charge and Montegut was acquitted. Woodfox and Wallace were tried and convicted in a West Feliciana Parish courthouse and sentenced to life terms. They were placed in solitary confinement immediately after their arrest and have remained there since 1972, probably the longest period of time any inmates have been held in solitary confinement in American penal history. Serious doubts have been raised through the years about their convictions.

            Between 1961 and 2000, Rideau’s murder conviction was reversed three times by federal courts: first, by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962; second, by a U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge in 1969; and third, by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2000. In each of these reversals the federal courts bent over backwards to give Rideau the constitutional benefit of the doubt.

            In 1992 Woodfox’s murder conviction was reversed by a state district court based on ineffective assistance of counsel. He was re-indicted in 1993.

            In the wake of Rideau’s third reversal, the famed prison journalist was put to trial in Calcasieu Parish in January 2005 for a fourth time for the murder of Julia Ferguson. He had a “million dollar” defense team led by NAACP Legal Counsel George Kendall defending him. He was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, sentenced to 21 years, and because he had already served more than enough time to discharge the sentence, he was released from custody.

            Woodfox was retried for the murder of Brent Miller in December 1998. He was convicted and re-sentenced to life imprisonment. He was represented by a pro bono attorney.

            The difference in the treatment of these two cases by the federal courts is striking. Wilbert Rideau during his 44-year incarceration in the Louisiana prison system was the “black darling” of the predominantly white liberal news media—continuously praised as an inmate who achieved incredible heights in the penal “rehabilitation” arena. He was hailed in the media, and recognized by some state and federal judges, as “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner.”

            Albert Woodfox, on the other hand, was a seen by the mainstream media and the state’s legal system as a “black militant”—a dangerous member of the Black Panther Party who killed a white prison guard as part of a “revolutionary” act.

            In 1999 a U.S. Magistrate named Christine Noland recommended that Rideau’s conviction be reversed and his life sentence set aside. U.S. District Court Judge Frank J. Polozola rejected Noland’s recommendation. Rideau appealed to the Fifth Circuit. A three-judge panel of that court in December 2000 reversed Polozola’s ruling and granted Rideau a new trial.

            In 2008 Magistrate Noland recommended that Woodfox’s conviction be reversed and his life sentence set aside. U.S. District Court Judge James L. Brady accepted Noland’s recommendation and set aside Woodfox’s conviction and sentence. In June 2010 the Fifth Circuit reversed Brady’s ruling and reinstated Woodfox’s conviction and sentence in a 2-1 panel decision.

            Both cases had major procedural legal hurdles to overcome in the federal courts: Rideau faced the fact that he had waited so long between his third conviction and his efforts to secure a fourth trial. The term coined at the federal level for this state inmate behavior is “delayed petition.” The former convict editor had in fact deliberately “delayed” his post-conviction efforts for at least two decades until he exhausted his clemency efforts before seeking a reversal of his conviction. As for Woodfox, he faced even greater procedural obstacles: he had to overcome the harsh effects of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which make it virtually impossible for a state prisoner to secure a reversal of his conviction at the federal level. Rideau spent those two decades “delaying” as the “most privileged inmate” in American penal history while Woodfox spent the same two decades in a brutal solitary confinement trying to prove his innocence. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, as evidenced by the stark contrast of its rulings in each case, went out of its way to excuse Rideau’s delay while going to extraordinary lengths to hold Woodfox’s feet to the fires of AEDPA.

            The irony and contrast of the two cases are stunning. Rideau was clearly guilty of the murder of Julia Ferguson while there have always been disturbing doubts about Woodfox’s guilt in the murder of Brent Miller. Rideau was not only embraced by the Louisiana prison system but given every opportunity to succeed in his rehabilitation efforts. Woodfox, on the other hand, was not only rejected by the Louisiana prison system from the very beginning as a “black militant” but was, and continues to be, brutalized by that system because of his perceived dangerous militancy.

            If nothing else, these two cases illustrate that the historical notion of justice being blind and all people are treated equal under the law in this country is a myth. When an undeniably guilty individual is given preferential legal treatment over a potentially innocent one, then it cannot possibly be said that justice is blind and equal. In a nutshell, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals embraced Wilbert Rideau because he upheld the “values” of the criminal justice system while the court shunned Albert Woodfox because he challenged those same values at every turn. That’s why their cases were handled so differently by the court: rehabilitation over militancy.

            Helen “Ginger” Berrigan was appointed to a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Louisiana on November 18, 1993 by former President Bill Clinton, and was confirmed by the Senate the following year. Edwin Edwards was in the second year of his fourth term as Governor of Louisiana when Berrigan secured the federal judgeship appointment. She had been closely associated with legendary attorney and political power broker Camille Gravel since her graduation from the Louisiana State University Law School in 1977. Gravel served as Edwards’ executive counsel during the governor’s first two terms in office (1972-1980) and his Alexandria-based law firm had actively defended Edwards in a litany of federal corruption probes. Berrigan worked on the Edwards’ defense team which secured a mistrial for the governor in 1985 on a number of federal corruption charges and which won an acquittal at the governor’s re-trial in 1986. Grateful for the legal assistance she had provided to his defense team, Edwards lent the support of his political machine to back Berrigan for the federal judgeship once Bill Clinton became president.

            In his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010, Wilbert Rideau said he first met Berrigan, who was just “Ginger Roberts” then, while she was still a law student at LSU and who, along with a number of other law students, had joined Louisiana Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps in a project to work with jailhouse lawyers at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. A staunch political liberal and longtime supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Berrigan formed a personal relationship with Rideau (at Phelps’ behest) which subsequently morphed into a pro bono attorney-client relationship.

            I met Berrigan in the late 1970s or early ‘80s. I retained her briefly in 1984 to represent me in a habeas corpus proceeding I had pending in a local federal court. Ginger and I maintained a cordial, professional relationship with her. It never resembled the personal relationship she maintained with Rideau although our paths frequently crossed during the course of all our relationships, including the one with Phelps. I never really trusted Ginger because she was too close to Edwards and the political power base in Baton Rouge which, at the time, was devoted to keeping me in prison for the rest of my life. Ginger, I suspect, had the same distrust for me.

            Rideau stated in his memoir (page 315) that “ … Since it was my truthfulness while testifying that was at stake, we [the “million dollar defense team”] would call ‘character witnesses’ only to establish that single point.” Berrigan, who was Chief Judge of the Eastern District at the time, was called to testify about whether Rideau had truthfully testified that he had written a letter of apology to his crime victims decades earlier. She confirmed that portion of his testimony. Later in his memoir (page 321) Rideau referred to Berrigan as a “character witness.”

            “Did it raise red flags with the jury that so many of the character witnesses for me were prevented from saying much?” he wrote. “I prayed that having a federal judge, a state appellate judge, two wardens, and a corrections officer vouching for my truthfulness would mean something to those all-important ten women and two men who held my fate in their hands.”

            I don’t know how Rideau’s defense team presented Judge Berrigan as a witness at the trial. She may have been called to simply verify one single point: that Rideau had in fact written a letter to his crime victims decades earlier; that he had given the letter to her because she was his attorney at the time; and that she made sure the victims received the letter. That did not necessarily make her a “character” witness unless she vouched for Rideau’s overall character for truthfulness.

           That’s an important distinction because Canon 2(B) of the “Code of Conduct for United States Judges“  specifically states: “Outside Influence.  A judge should not allow family, social, political, financial, or other relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment. A judge should neither lend the prestige of the judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others nor convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge. A judge should not testify voluntarily as a character witness.”

            Rideau presented Judge Berrigan as a “character” witness in his memoir—and that’s why federal judges are prohibited from testifying as character witnesses in judicial proceedings. It allows “others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge,” which is what Rideau did in his memoir. Judge Berrigan had obvious “private interests” in Rideau due to her longstanding personal and professional relationship with him. Rideau implied in his memoir that the federal judge just so happened to show up at his trial as the exact  moment when her testimony was needed to corroborate his testimony about the letter of apology to the victims. That may or may not have been the case.

            But one thing is clear: if Judge Berrigan was not put on the defense team’s “witness list” and had not been expected to testify to vouch for Rideau’s truthfulness, then she “voluntarily” chose to testify in a situation which allowed the famed prison journalist to describe her as a “character witness” in his memoir.

            This would not mark the first time Judge Berrigan has faced serious questions about the propriety of her judicial conduct. She has been roundly accused of handling cases from the bench in which she had “conflicts of interest,” to the point that some have called for her impeachment and censure. I am really not certain that Judge Berrigan’s testimony—if it concerned the sole issue about the letter of apology—could properly be characterized as “character witness” testimony. But that’s not the point: the point is that Rideau called her a “character witness” in his memoir—and that may not be true.

            It depends. Either Judge Berrigan was or wasn’t a “character witness” for Rideau. If she was, then she violated her own canons of judicial conduct. And if she wasn’t a character witness, then Rideau lied when he said she was in his memoir—and isn’t that ironical! He lists a number of “character witnesses” in his memoir who vouched for his truthfulness yet he lied about one of them. As I have said repeatedly in various posts on this website, the truth is never enough for Rideau. He has an insatiable need to embellish to enhance his own sense of importance. He is a genuine “spin doctor.”

           I like hearing from supporters of Wilbert Rideau. They casually malign my character and impugn my motives for maintaining this website. Rideau did the same thing in his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010): he lied, misrepresented, and fabricated to malign all the people he feels did him wrong during his 44-year penal incarceration. This website was created to refute those lies, misrepresentation and fabrications. I have not tried, nor will I ever try, to pass these posts off as “journalism.” My posts are presented to provide the online public with documented facts and reasoned points of view (based on my 40-year prison experience and my decade-long personal and professional relationship with Wilbert Rideau) to illustrate that In The Place of Justice is a literary fraud.

            If any of Rideau’s supporters can present credible evidence (not personal opinion or biased perspectives) that I have lied about or misrepresented any information on this website about the “famed prison journalist,” I will cease my posts. Until then, and for as long as the material is available, I will continue with my posts. This website will exist as long as Rideau’s memoir remains in print. When he was writing his memoir, do you seriously believe that the former convict editor had any personal or professional concerns about the feelings of the people he was determined to “get even” with. He had been the “darling” of the national media for so long during his incarceration that he believed he had an unchecked literary license to write whatever he wanted about others in his memoir without regard for the truth. Personally, I don’t care if the New York Times and NPR’s Fresh Air believe Wilbert Rideau is the greatest invention since the light bulb. I know better. He is a literary thief and a journalistic fraud. This website has documented both charges.

            I suggest that Rideau supporters read more of the message and shoot less at the messenger. The fact that the message presented here is not important to them is precisely why I have used this website to clear up the lies and misrepresentations Rideau presented in his memoir: either to “get even” with people he doesn’t like or to present himself in a “hero’s light.” And I will repeat some the examples here:

• Sister Helen Prejean: Portrayed as a naïve nun who knew nothing about the prison world and had no business acting as a “prison reform” spokesperson for inmates.
• Burl Cain: The current warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary depicted a corrupt, lying, dishonest official because he curtailed a litany of Rideau’s “special privileges.” Rideau even implied the warden tried to have him killed.
• John Whitley: Former warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Though portrayed as a staunch Rideau supporter, Rideau depicted Whitley in an unflattering manner as a bumbling warden incapable of handling a prison crisis without Rideau’s assistance. He did so with conversations that either did not occur or did not occur as Rideau described them.
• Ross Maggio: Former warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Rideau attributed conversations and actions to Maggio that did not happen. He did so in a manner designed to undermine the professional integrity of the former warden.
• Frank J. Polozola: U.S. District Court Judge in Baton Rouge. Depicted as a judge with a “hidden agenda” to cover up violence at the state penitentiary.
• Buddy Roemer: Former Governor of Louisiana. Depicted as a manipulating and conniving politician because Roemer rejected Rideau’s clemency bids.
• Dora McCain: One of Rideau’s three crime victims. She survived his murderous assault. Portrayed as psychologically unstable and who lied about how Rideau attempted to kill her and how he did kill one of the bank employee hostages.
• Rick Bryant: Former District Attorney of Calcasieu Parish. Portrayed as a racist prosecutor because he consistently opposed Rideau’s release from prison and had the courage to prosecute the “famed prison journalist” a fourth time for murder.
• White Community of Lake Charles: Depicted as old south “Johnny Reb” racists because they did not embrace the “greatest” and “importance” of the man who committed the worst crime in the history of their parish.
• Lake Charles Media: Depicted as corrupt and unprofessional because they consistently refused to buy into Rideau’s storyline that his crimes were a byproduct of having been reared in the shadows of the racist Southern confederacy.
• Bishop John Sullivan: A Kansas Catholic bishop misidentified in Rideau’s memoir as a “not so reverend pedophile.”

         I did not include my wife and I on this list. We have adequately defended ourselves against Rideau’s scurrilous attacks.

         What I find particularly scandalous is that Random House published Rideau’s memoir with little or no serious fact-checking. Equally disturbing is the fact that “journalists” for the New York Times, NPR, and Associated Press rushed to not only embrace but professionally endorse the memoir despite its obvious factual errors, misrepresentations, and fabrications.

        This website has done what they should have done.

           In the second to last chapter in Wilbert Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), titled “Behind Enemy Lines,” the famed prison journalist lamented about the travails his massive defense team faced preparing for his fourth murder trial. According to the former award-winning convict editor, the District Attorney, the Trial Judge, and the entire White Community of Lake Charles, Louisiana joined in a massive conspiracy to convict him a fourth time for the brutal murder of bank teller Julia Ferguson. And the prospect of being sent back into the Louisiana prison system as just another prisoner scared the crap out of him. He expressed the fear this way:

            “ … I thought of everything I had given up at Angola for what was my last shot a freedom. I was at the top of the pecking order in Angola’s inmate society. I had the best job in the prison, where I could weave some meaning into my existence. I sat on the boards of several inmate clubs, which expanded my ability to make a difference in the quality of prisoners’ lives. I was the president of the Human Relations Club, which enabled me to bring resources to bear to help elderly prisoners and hospice patients. I was one of a handful of inmate leaders who worked together for the good of the whole institution, inmates and staff alike, rather than for their own personal ends. We worked to keep peace and order in the prison, though this was sometimes misunderstood by inmates who saw Angola only through the narrow lens of their personal pain. And I had perks. I worked in an air-conditioned office rather than in the field. Even though my traveling was cut out and media access to me increasingly restricted and monitored Burl Cain’s arrival in 1995, and even though The Angolite was censored, what I left behind at Angola was a relative paradise compared to what I could look forward to if we lost this trial. I had to believe Providence had something better in store for me; still, the specter of a cell at Wade haunted my waking thoughts and gave me night sweats whenever things took a turn for the worse.”

            Let me translate that “prison rehabilitation” double-speak into real world language. The “meaning” Rideau had managed to “weave” into his prison existence was the “celebrity status” he had achieved as the “famed prison journalist.” He and that “handful of [other] inmate leaders” did not work for the “good of the whole institution.” They very well may have participated in some projects that helped the “elderly prisoners and hospice patients” but their motives were not as altruistic as Rideau would have readers believe. Being involved in self-help inmate organizations provided the more intelligent and skilled inmates (more commonly referred in the prison community as “inmate politicians) an opportunity to accumulate status and influence in the prison community, especially among the staff. Rideau even pointed out that their efforts were “sometimes misunderstood by [the other] inmates.” No, the general inmate population did not misunderstand either their actions or motives. They knew Rideau and his cohorts were kissing ass with the administration to protect their own admitted “privileged” status. I know. I was once at that fair and seen that bear.

            As for one of Rideau’s favorite terms, “make a difference,” I discussed in my last post his claim of how he reportedly made a “difference for the citizens of Lake Charles.” The term sounds good, especially when used in the context to make Rideau out as a savior in the world. The problem is that nothing about the term, as it is used in Rideau’s memoir, is true.

            But I am sure it is true that Rideau did experience “night sweats” when he thought about spending the rest of his life in a “cell at Wade.” I was in one of those cells “at Wade” for nine years as a non-privileged inmate—and I spent two years after that in general population “at Phelps”—another medium security facility in the Louisiana prison system. Rideau stepped on a lot of people rising to, and maintaining, that position as “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner.” And as the old saying goes: you meet the people on the way down that you stepped on on the way up. There were a significant number of inmates waiting in the wings to remind him of that harsh reality.

            Still, I don’t know of any inmate, except Wilbert Rideau, who would have endured “night sweats” at the thought of being re-convicted because it would have meant returning to prison as a regular inmate and not as the top chicken in the “pecking order” in the prison community. You are what you are. Fame and celebrity status do not define the individual—unless you’re Wilbert Rideau. He had cultivated an “image” in both the prison and free worlds that had no basis in fact or reality. He knew he didn’t have the gravel in the voice or the sand in the balls to make it in the real “belly of the beast.”  Inmates at the bottom of the ladder do not care about fame-produced status; they respect only what you carry between your legs and your ability to cope with the shared misery so prevalent in the “belly of the beast.” Rideau couldn’t measure up in either regard.

            Tragically, to this very day, Wilbert Rideau still fondly looks back on those days when he was a “big shot” in the world of prison. The free world has obviously been a disappointment for him in that respect. He’s been unable to climb to the top of its “pecking order.” Even his memoir has thus failed to propel him to the top of that order warranting at least CNN anchor spot. For all practical purposes, he’s just another whining “celebrity” ex-con who hasn’t measured up to the hype. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, Rideau should just get an honest job, embrace an anonymous life, and be thankful for both.

            In his memoir, In the Place of Justice (Random House 2010), Wilbert Rideau continuously presents himself as the “Johnny-on-the-spot” solution man for individuals facing problematic situations. The rub is that he makes the person with the problem seem like a dimwit who cannot think or act for himself without the famed prison journalist’s professional guidance. I pointed this out in my May 18, 2010 post, Wilbert Rideau: Angola’s De Facto Warden. That post dealt with Rideau making former Angola Warden John Whitley appear to be incapable of handling a “prison crisis” without the advice, counsel, and instruction of the former editor of The Angolite. Acting upon Rideau’s counsel, Warden Whitley managed to quell the crisis without any major difficulty— at least according to the Rideau. I now have impeccable information that the conversations Rideau attributed to himself and Whitley did not occur—at least not in the context in which the famed prison journalist described them in his memoir.

            That’s why I approach the next “Johnny-on-the-spot” episode described by Rideau in his memoir with serious reservations. This one deals with a Rev. J.L. Franklin, a prominent black Lake Charles minister, a staunch Rideau supporter, and a local political power broker of sorts. While Rideau was housed in the Calcasieu Parish Jail awaiting his fourth murder trial, which took place in January 2005, Rev. Franklin staged a number of rallies and meetings with other Lake Charles ministers and black leaders to drum up support, particularly in the African-American community, for the award-winning inmate journalist. Rideau at least had the courtesy to express his gratitude for Rev. Franklin’s efforts.

            But here’s where the story takes another one of those bizarre, unbelievable Rideau “spin doctoring” turns. While waiting for the legal maneuvering to run its course prior to the trial, Rev. Franklin, according to Rideau, provided the former convict editor with “another opportunity to make a difference for the citizens of Calcasieu Parish. (Emphasis mine) But you read it correctly: another opportunity to “make a difference for the citizens of Calcasieu Parish.” I don’t know what “differences” (and the memoir did not detail any significant ones) Rideau made for the “citizens of Lake Charles” before Rev. Franklin’s “opportunity” knocked. But I don’t think robbing a bank, kidnapping three bank employees, trying to kill all three, and managing to kill one (no matter how the crime is justified) really qualifies as making “a difference for the citizens of Lake Charles.”

            Nonetheless, Rideau wrote that in early 2004 Rev. Franklin shared with him the minister’s frustration “about the substandard education the students in his district were getting and in fact that the superintendent of schools was ignoring the problem.” Faced with this enormous problem, Rideau confidently advised Rev. Franklin to “get rid of the superintendent” and that would solve the problem.

            Rev. Franklin wavered in the face of such a bold suggestion. “How?” he asked Rideau, apparently unable to see either the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. “He’s been an icon out here for a decade, a local hero who writes Cajun cookbooks on the side. They’ll never fire him.”

            Undeterred, Rideau, the eighth-grade dropout who had apparently by 2004 become an authority on local education through his “prison journalism,” gives the intimidated Reverend the courage to press forward, instructing: “They will if you bring enough heat on him. Get your Coalition of Pastors for Action involved. These statistics are a scandal. The kids in the black schools are even outperformed by kids in all of the surrounding parishes, where the schools have less money and few resources. Educate your preachers.”

            Rev. Franklin saw the “guiding light.” His prayers had been answered. The famed prison journalist sitting in his jail cell had delivered to the minister the solution to his problem—how to save the black kids in his district from “bad education.” Rev. Franklin led his fellow black ministers on a media campaign to oust the school superintendent. The campaign worked, Rideau said, and in June of of that year “the school board voted that [the superintendent] would have to leave within a year.”

            Having successfully dethroned the local superintendent of education, Rideau said he turned his attention to “some other local politics. I advised the black community in the race for the congressional seat of southwestern Louisiana held by Democrat Chris John, who was making a run for retiring John Breaux’s spot in the Senate.”

            Can you believe the audacity of that assertion? The famed prison journalist, sitting in a jail cell (and we’re not talking about Martin Luther King’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail” here), “advised the black community” on who it should elect to a U.S. Congressional seat!

            Inherent in these two bodacious claims is the underlying premise that neither Rev. Franklin on his own could find a way to deal the Cajun cookbook writing education superintendent and nor could the black community of Lake Charles decide who they wanted to serve them in Congress without Rideau’s sterling silver advice.

            I will say this politely but whose meaning demands a much stronger expression: bull manure! In each of these episodes, just like with the Warden Whitley crisis, Rideau is the “problem solver,” the Johnny-on-the-spot” solution man. He’s the smart one. The recipient of his advice and counsel is the dimwit. He casts supporter after supporter in the same light—being unable to handle their personal and professional business without the guidance of “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner.”

            Believe me, I did not invent this stuff. It’s in the book. I swear it is! Buy the book if you don’t believe me. And if you believe what this ninth “wonder of the world” said, well, that Arizona property is still available.

             According to his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), Wilbert Rideau met his wife, Linda Labranche, in 1986. She was a “Shakespeare[an] scholar” at Northwestern University in Illinois. She saw Rideau on an ABC Nightline program in July of that year and was drawn to his case. Their relationship evolved into both a personal and professional commitment on her part to help secure freedom for the famed prison journalist. By all accounts, she waged an admirable, even Herculean effort which ultimately paid off when Rideau’s murder conviction was reversed a third time in 2000 and he was found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter in January 2005. Having served 44 years by January 2005, he was immediately released from custody after the maximum 21-year manslaughter sentence was imposed on him. He joined Labranche in the free world.

            While I had heard of Dr. Labranche’s involvement in the Rideau case in the wake of my departure from The Angolite and the Louisiana State Penitentiary in November 1986, I came to understand the depth of that involvement in March 2004 when she showed up as a “spectator” at a civil rights trial in Baton Rouge at which I was suing the former Louisiana State Police superintendent, Paul Fontenot, over his decision to transfer me from the State Police Barracks in 1994 where I had been housed as a “protected witness” the previous eight years. She either attended the trial at her own volition or Rideau’s suggestion (and I suspect the latter) to see what kind of “dirt” she could gather about me for future use by the former convict editor she had fallen in love with. A significant portion of Rideau’s “fame and success” as a prison journalist had been built off my literary work, and following our break up as co-editors of the Angolite, he made thrashing me the fabric of his campaign to assume exclusive credit for the success of the prison publication. So he was always on the prowl for “dirt”—favorite tactic of Rideau and his supporters when they wanted to “smear” someone.

            Rideau had been free only a short time before Dr. Labranche decided to capitalize on the massive media attention given to the release of the famed prison journalist. She applied to the Open Society Institute of the George Soros Foundation for a “grant” to research and write the history of The Angolite. In February 2006 she was awarded a Soros fellowship of $75,000 to subsidize this literary venture. That’s a lot of money for a project whose history had pretty much already been chronicled in a number of other venues. I really don’t know how “grant money” works because I never felt a need for such welfare to support my literary efforts. But I assume this money is used by the recipients to “live on” while they research and write their proposed projects.

            The ink had barely dried on Labranche’s $75,000 Soros check when Rideau applied for his own Soros grant to subsidize his proposed memoir (“The Truth Shall Set You Free”). The very next February (2007) Rideau was also awarded a Soros fellowship of $75,000 to subsidize his memoir effort. That’s $150,000 for two related literary efforts associated with none other than Wilbert Rideau.  I’ve heard of “corporate welfare” and “government welfare” but the Rideaus educated me about “Foundation grant welfare.” And what did the American public get for it? Nothing so far from Labranche and a horribly written literary fraud from Rideau. Just think about how many computers a $150,000 grant would have bought for depressed inner city schools! The waste of that $150,000 is a tragedy, and an internal audit by the Soros Foundation should result in the firing of whoever was responsible for giving the Rideaus their $150,000.

            My wife, Jodie, learned about the Labranche/Soros grant in the Spring of 2006. She contacted the Soros Foundation to express her concern about Labranche’s objectivity when it came to my role in the history of The Angolite. She was assured by Soros officials that due credit would be given to me for my contributions to the prison publication. That ended the matter as far as we were concerned. We would await the final product before passing judgment.

            I was released on parole from the Louisiana prison system in April 2006. In late November 2006 I received several emails from Dr. Labranche seeking my input on her Angolite project. The emails were very formal, terse almost in their content. She presented me with 11 questions about the Angolite operation she wanted me to respond to. She also asked that I produce a DVD with me responding to the questions which could be utilized for marketing and promotion of her project. She told me she was up against a hard deadline that December.

            I gave the request some thought before responding to it. I surmised that Dr. Labranche had completed the Angolite project without giving me any real credit for the prison publication’s journalistic success. When she turned in her completed work to whoever was supervising the project, I suspect she was asked to re-work it to include me in magazine’s history. Why else would a professional researcher wait until the final weeks of a project’s deadline to contact one of the most significant people involved in the history of the project? In any event, I spent nearly $600 (my money, not Soros money) at South Coast Film and Video to have the DVD professionally made. I spent another $25 to send it FedEx so Dr. Labranche would receive it in sufficient time to meet her deadline.

            And what did I get for my efforts? Nothing. Nada. Not so much as a professional courtesy “thank you.”

            That pretty much convinced me that Dr. Labranche had been forced to contact me about the project. It was not something she wanted to do, but something she was either encouraged or instructed to do.

            But therein lies the true nature of Wilbert Rideau—character traits I have described in many posts on this site. He will go to any length possible to deny someone else proper credit for their work or “hog all the credit” for himself, even if it means stealing it. He has to be the big hog at the trough, pushing all the piglets aside until he has satisfied his gluttony for self-promotion.

            I don’t know if Dr. Labranche met her “deadline” on the Soros-funded “history of The Angolite” project, but I do know a Google search turns up nothing about the project ever being published. Perhaps she didn’t make the deadline, or, perhaps the finished product didn’t measure up to publication standards. Who knows? All I know is that she, like hubby Wilbert, conducts her research/literary endeavors in an unprofessional manner. C’mon, a courtesy “thank you” would have been appropriate, especially since I was out more than 600 bucks and the time wasted out of my personal life to provide the information/material she requested.

            But someone once wrote that “for every disadvantage, there’s an advantage.” Had Dr. Labranche given me that courtesy “thank you,” I wouldn’t have this piece to post into cyberspace where it will forever percolate.

            The Shirley Sherrod episode has stirred the racial consciousness in America much like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy did in 2008. These kinds of episodes for the most part trigger healthy discussions among every day Americans about the state of race relations in this country. But they also unleash the extreme voices, the fringe lunatics who want to sling charges of racism against any and every one who may say something unkind about a member of another race. I recently became a target of this fringe “racism-charging” element by one of Wilbert Rideau’s “white male” supporters. The supporter’s comments and my reply to them can be found here. But essentially the white male supporter charged:

            “Mr. Sinclair obviuously [sic] has an agenda, and and [sic] that is to make himself look good while making Mr. Rideau look like a pathalogical [sic] liar. Mr. Sinclair is just another of the good ol’ boy, institutional racism that exist just under the radar in the country. As a white male, I have met other people like sinclair [sic] who refuse to believe that a black man may be a good man. All they see is color, and it sickens me…”

            There’s a saying we fondly use in Texas that “he’s all hat and no cattle.” Well, that pretty much fits Rideau’s “white male” supporter. I find it almost amusing that I am charged with racism against the very man who played the “race card” at every turn through his 44-year privileged incarceration in the Louisiana prison system, during his fourth murder trial in January 2005, and throughout his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010) yet who said “white people” were really his only friends and supporters.

            Rideau’s gives passing mention in his memoir to three of his black friends—Calvin Duncan, Lafayette Ballard, and Sidney Deloch—who were instrumental in different ways of helping the famed prison journalist win his freedom from the Louisiana prison they shared. Rideau does not mention in his memoir a single thing he did for them, or for his white friend Douglas “Swede” Dennis who he promised to help once he got his free world life in order. Apparently he and his wife were too consumed hustling The Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation for the $150,000 in grant money they got in 2006-2007 to be concerned about “friends” (black or white) left behind in prison.

            I’ve been a free man from the Louisiana prison system for more than four years. I work for a living. I don’t suckle on the tit of grant money to get by. I am in frequent contact with two black friends I left behind in the prison system. I stay in contact with their families. I frequently send their families money to help provide for the basic living needs of the two inmates. I do this because I “promised” that if I was ever in a position to help them, I would—and I have kept my word. The best friend I have in this world is a black man with whom I spent more than a decade in prison. Today he is married, active in his church, supports his wife’s children and grandchildren, and works hard for a living as a long-haul truck driver. He and I both understand the value of family, friendship, and work. Rideau does not possess these character traits—never has, never will. He is an incurable sociopath, and, yes, a pathological liar as well.

            Had Wilbert Rideau left me and my wife alone in his penny ante memoir, the “famed prison journalist” could have skated through the media glory promoting his book without our fact-checking and criticism. But in his warped perspective he felt compelled to “get even” with all the people he believes wronged him in one way or another throughout his privileged penal incarceration. But there’s an inevitable cost in lying, misrepresenting, and fabricating—chickens do come home to roost.

            No one has come forward to refute any of the “facts” and charges I have made on this website about In The Place of Justice. I’m sorry that a number of respected members of the media went out on the limb and endorsed the memoir with glowing praise without fact-checking it. Many of these respected journalists have a long history of promoting the life and interests of Wilbert Rideau without fact-checking anything he told them. His charm, wit, and the life story he invented was simply too compelling for them to question. They really didn’t care if what he said was true or not so long as it produced “good copy.”

            Rideau’s “white supporter” said he read In the Place of Justice and believed everything Rideau said in it. If anyone seriously reads the memoir, puts it down, and can honestly say they believe all or most of what Rideau said in it, then I really do have some of that “ocean front property in Arizona” (and free of illegal immigrants) to sell you. In my post Wilbert Rideau: The Spin Doctor, I discussed conversations Rideau claimed to have had with former Angola Warden Ross Maggio. I have impeccable information that those conversations did not take place. And in my post Wilbert Rideau: Angola’s De Facto Warden I discussed conversations Rideau claimed to have had with another former Angola warden, John Whitley. I also have impeccable information that those conversations did not take place as Rideau described them.

            Why hasn’t Wilbert Rideau’s media friends called these two former wardens to get the real story? The same reason the “white supporter” jumped my case about being a closet racist:  I have tried to make Rideau look like the pathological liar he is. It’s easier, and more tidy, to perpetuate a myth than expose the truth—in other words, shoot the messenger because the message he bears is truthful.

            Finally, on the subject of racism let me say this loud and clear where all of Rideau’s supporters can hear: attack my motives for putting up this website on any ground you like (jealously, envy, vindictiveness, etc.), but racism is not a legitimate charge. You can make that charge all you like, but its mud won’t stick.