Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

             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.