LITERARY FRAUDS
Over the past five years there have been a number of best-selling memoirs that turned out to be literary frauds. Below is a list of the most notable ones:
- “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey
- “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” by Misha Defonseca
- “Love and Consequences” by Margaret B. Jones
- “Angel at the Fence” by Herman Rosenblat
- “The Thieves of Manhattan” by Adam Langer
- “Last Train From Hiroshima” by Charles Pellegrino
- “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson
Each of these memoirs were embellished with fabrications; lies about events the authors said happened which did not happen. Memoirs are a natural depositing place for fabrications, especially about events to which all the parties are dead or untraceable except for the author. Publishing houses, especially Random House and its subsidiaries, has a sordid history of not vetting, “fact-checking,” memoirs submitted to them for publication, particularly memoirs involving authors with whom Random House has a longstanding relationship.
Wilbert Rideau and his 2010 memoir, “In The Place of Justice,” is a prime example. Random House fact-checkers certainly did not vet Rideau’s memoir which is littered with factual errors and outrageous fabrications which could have discredited with a few telephone calls. I would venture a guess that Rideau’s editor and Random House fact-checkers were so dizzy, or perhaps enthralled, by wading through one embellishment after another in the manuscript that they could not distinguish fact from fiction. Below is a list of Rideau’s more glaring fabrications and factual errors in his memoir:
- Lied that a parole board chairwoman secured executive clemency for two convicted murders from Gov. Edwin Edwards in March 1988 as a favor to Rideau.
- Lied that a pardon board member regularly visited him in The Angolite office in 1987 and divulged to Rideau all the confidential workings of the board.
- Lied about conversations and events involving two former Angola wardens, Ross Maggio and John Whitley, in an effort to enhance his power and influence at the state penitentiary
- Lied that The Angolite in 1989 took on a sitting federal judge and a sitting governor, forcing them to take actions they would not have taken except for pressure from the prison magazine.
- Lied that The Angolite influenced a 1989 State Police investigation into corruption at the state penitentiary.
- Lied that The Angolite forced the state legislature to change the state’s method of execution from the electric chair to lethal injection.
- Lied that The Angolite was not involved in a massive 1986 pardons-selling scheme when one of the magazine’s staffers bought a pardon.
- Misidentified a Kansas City Catholic bishop with a Baton Rouge Catholic bishop who was a proven pedophile.
- Misrepresented that both Gov. Dave Treen and Gov. Edwards were in office the same year, stating that both brought about pressure against The Angolite.
These are some of the more patently ridiculous fabrications/factual errors in Rideau’s memoir—and all of them are worse than, or at least comparable to, the fabrications that discredited the other memoirs cited in this article. Rideau’s fabrications/factual errors could easily be established with one day of investigation. But the mainstream media does not have an appetite for this kind of messy affair; after all, it was the media who created Rideau and continues to promote him.
Still, I will leave the challenge hanging out for any interested person—disapprove any of the fabrications/factual errors I have leveled against Rideau’s memoir. They cannot.
