Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

            On June 23, 2010 Andrew Collins submitted a “comment” critical of this website and its handling of Wilbert Rideau. Mr. Collins’ comments were in response to my June 10, 2010 post “Wilbert Rideau: A Problem With Ethics.” That post, Mr. Collins comments, and my reply to those comments can be found here. Mr. Collins’ comments are worthy not only of posting but they provide me with an opportunity to address the charges Rideau and his supporters have most often leveled against me, not just about this website but about my previous criticisms of the famed prison journalist in different forums.

            Mr. Collins said that I am “jealous” of Rideau’s national acclaim; that all this website is doing is “whining and complaining” in an effort to “slander Mr. Rideau.” Rideau made the same charges against me in his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010); that I was envious and jealous of his success and had engaged in efforts to “trash” his reputation after our professional relationship soured.

            Wilbert Rideau was released from the Louisiana prison system in January 2005 after serving 44 years for killing one person and trying to kill two others. I was released from prison in April 2006 after serving 40 years for killing one person. During his first year of freedom, Rideau declared bankruptcy, lived off the charity and the kindness of others, and refused to make an honest, tax-paying living. During my first year of freedom, I enrolled in a local community college, went through two semesters carrying 18 hours, made the Dean’s List, and learned everything I could about Texas law and online legal research. I got a job as a paralegal with a law firm and went to work making an honest, tax-paying living.

            In 2006, Wilbert Rideau’s wife, Linda Labranche, received a $75,000 grant from the Soros Foundation to do a study on the history of The Angolite, the official newsmagazine at the Louisiana State Penitentiary and of which Rideau was the editor for nearly 25 years. Labranche did not produce any study discoverable through a Google search. The following year, 2007, Rideau got a $75,000 grant from the Soros Foundation to write his memoir. That’s $150,000 in charity for one family from one foundation.

            In 2009 my wife and I published our second book, Capital Punishment: An Indictment by a Death Row Survivor (Arcade Publishing 2009). We did not ask for, nor did we need, charity from the Soros Foundation or any other foundation in researching and writing our book. And we wrote and published the book while we were both gainfully employed at honest, tax-paying jobs.

            And that was exactly what my wife and I were doing this past April when Random House released Rideau’s memoir: working, making an honest living, paying our taxes, and surviving the economic downtown like everyone else. We were not hustling grants or seeking charity. Everything we own is the product of our hard work, paid for with equity sweat. Then came Rideau’s memoir—a petty, spiteful literary endeavor that maligns any and everyone Rideau feels wronged him during his 44-year incarceration. And he particularly devoted a lot of print to my wife and I—and there was not one, single negative criticism of either of us that is honest or factual. The criticisms are grounded in lies and fabrications. And had this been just some “rooty poo” prison memoir (which I personally think it is), we would have let Rideau’s wimpy little tirades of spite roll off our backs like water off a duck.

            But it’s not a rooty-poo memoir (although I still believe it is): The New York Times has reviewed it twice (going beyond its usual Jack Abbott standard of hype); Ted Koppel called it “an extraordinary book;” and NPR’s Fresh Air host Terry Gross swooned over it with American Bandstand-like adulation. So had my wife and I not chosen to rebut Rideau’s false and malicious fabrications with this website, our silence would have lent credence to his charges. But beyond our personal interests is the fact that my wife and I have an obligation to protect the public record from the numerous factual errors and factual misrepresentations that paint the literary landscape of Rideau’s memoir. We not only have the facts but the means to put the correct information in the public record for anyone who is interested in Wilbert Rideau, The Real Story. We did not ask to be part of the “Rideau debate” his memoir has created in the journalism and criminal justice arenas. He made us part of the debate—and, yes, we have embraced that debate with both personal and professional fervor.

            Now some people like Mr. Collins will accuse me of being “jealous” and waging an “old rivalry” with Rideau. We are all gifted with a free will—the right to think as we please and to express our opinions about others in a responsible manner in marketplace of free ideas. Mr. Collins is free to put his opinions about me in that marketplace. That is the nature of a true democracy. Thomas Paine would love Mr. Collins.

            And I actually welcome opinions from people like Mr. Collins. More often than not they are terribly misinformed and tend to say things without clearly thinking them through. For example, Mr. Collins accuses me of being an irresponsible journalist because I pointed out a series of Rideau’s ethical lapses. He did not condemn Rideau’s ethical lapses; he condemned me with the charges that I was “jealous” of “Rideau’s national attention” and that I have an obvious “conflict of interest” because I have a “personal vendetta against Rideau” because I exposed those lapses.

            I don’t know what “codes of ethics” and civic lessons Mr. Collins has read in his lifetime but clearly telling the truth about a famous journalist engaging in unethical literary behavior is not a conflict of interest under any reasonable personal or professional definition. My motives, either rooted in jealousy or personal vendetta, are irrelevant to the issue of whether or not some of the admitted behavior in Wilbert Rideau’s memoir was corrupt, unethical, and perhaps even illegal as was discussed in the post that offended Mr. Collins. That is the only issue in the ethics debate: did Rideau’s own admitted behavior violate the Code of Ethics endorsed by the Society of Professional Journalists? Sidebar issues are not relevant.

            Now if someone wants to say my “motives” are colored by “jealousy” or an “old rivalry” between Rideau and I, that’s fine. I’m not trying to sell my motives. I am presenting factual information, historical analysis, and 40-years of prison experience through this website to reveal that In The Place of Justice is not “an extraordinary book” as Mr. Koppel claimed but a literary fraud—just like another Random House book released in 2003: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. The beauty of the Internet and the websites it hosts is that they are there for those who want to stop and visit. The old adage “if you don’t like the music on the radio, turn it off” applies here.

            So if people like Mr. Collins don’t like the information this website is providing, don’t stop and shop. But if you want to know about Wilbert Rideau, The Real Story, pull up a chair and sit a spell.