Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

           On April 27, 2010, Alfred A. Knopf, a publishing house in New York and a subsidiary of Random House, Inc., released a “prison memoir” by Wilbert Rideau titled In The Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance.

            Through this website, I have chronicled a laundry list of factual errors, contradictions, misrepresentations and embellishments in Rideau’s memoir. They can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

            I recently received first-hand information that conversations Rideau said took place between him and two former Louisiana State Penitentiary wardens, Ross Maggio and John Whitley, did not occur. Rideau fabricated these conversations to embellish his self-serving claims about the power and prestige he enjoyed in the Louisiana prison community as an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and editor of The Angolite. Based upon the information I received recently from an irrefutable source, the Rideau/Maggio conversations cited in his memoir never happened and some of the Rideau/Whitley conversations did not transpire as they were described in the memoir. This leads me to believe—something I have suspected since the release of the book—that conversations and events Rideau attributed to current Angola Warden Burl Cain either did not happen or did not occur as he described them in the memoir.

            Therefore, I call upon Jonathan Segal, Rideau’s editor at Knopf, to investigate the charge leveled in this post that Rideau fabricated conversations and events he attributed to wardens Maggio, Whitley, and Cain. I call upon Mr. Segal to telephone these warens to confirm or refute the charge that In The Place of Justice is a literary fraud—a charge I have repeatedly made on this website by pointing out not only significant factual errors but a litany of fabrications and misrepresentations contained in the book.

            In the wake of its previously published literary fraud, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, Random House, Inc. and its Knopf subsidiary have an obligation to the public to determine if the publishing giant has released yet another literary fraud with Rideau’s In The Place of Justice.

            Further, I call upon The New York Times, which has reviewed and praised Rideau’s memoir twice (here and here), the Associated Press which, through New Orleans-based reporter Mary Foster, gave the memoir glowing recommendation(here), and NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross who gave Rideau a nationwide platform to hype the memoir (here) to investigate the charge that In The Place of Justice is a literary fraud. These media outlets—all of whom played a significant role in creating the “famed prison journalist,” often called “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner” during his incarceration in the Louisiana prison system—have foisted off on an unsuspecting public the notion that Rideau’s memoir is “an extraordinary book” as described by former ABC Nightline host Ted Koppel on the back jacket of the book.

            In the wake of the decision by the publishing house Henry Holt and Co. to shut down any further publication of Charles Pellegrino’s The Last Train From Hiroshima because of fabrications it contained, these media outlets have a professional obligation to investigate the charge that Rideau’s In The Place of Justice contains fabrications as serious as, or even worse than, those attributed to Pellegrino’s book.

            That said, I have serious doubts that either Random House or the prominent media outlets named here in this post will investigate Rideau’s memoir. Why? Writing a guest column that appeared on the website Shooting Shrink on May 1, 2010, forensic genealogist Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick wrote about two literary frauds (Misha Defonseca’s Surviving With Wolves and Herman Rosenblat’s Apple Story) and had this to say about such books/memoirs:

            “There is no law against publishing a book as nonfiction when there are suspicions that it is a fabrication. It may even be desirable to do so. Marketing a story as autobiographical can be more lucrative than marketing it as fiction. Public controversy over the truth only boosts sales.

            “Both Misha’s and Herman’s stories would have made good reading as fiction, but the job of big publishing houses is not truth-in-marketing. Their job is to make money. And once a work of non-fiction is exposed as a fraud, there is usually no requirement to return the money to the unsuspecting public. Embarrassment is often enough to cease publication of the work and move on to the next project. In the present cases, the publishers maintain their innocence, claiming they were taken in by the con as much as the public, and did the best job they could with the difficult task of fact-checking a Holocaust story when documentation was so hard to come by. Yet if forensic genealogists could find evidence conclusively debunking the stories, then why couldn’t multi-million dollar publishing houses?

            “A fraudulent autobiography can be lucrative for its author too. After James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was exposed in 2006 as fake, he was invited by Oprah to appear on her show to explain himself—displacing countless other authors more worthy of airtime. Late in 2007, James Frey received a seven-figure advance from a publisher for his next three books.

            “As I remarked to my colleague, ‘”We’re in the wrong business. The real money is in creating the frauds, not debunking them. Since we are experts at how literary frauds are constructed, why don’t we create our own?’ …

            “Without the support of publishers, the autobiographical fraud industry would wither. While there is so much money publishing falsehood, there is little incentive to tell the truth. If you still want to enjoy a good story, please don’t believe everything you read in the paper, nor paperback. If a story seems too ‘incredible’ to be true, it usually is. For those of you who wish to take a stronger stand against literary fraud, I offer further advice. Don’t buy the book, and I wouldn’t wait for the movie either.”

            While the publishing industry and the news media may be willing to forgive James Frey for his literary fakery and memoirist transgressions, both industries owe a higher standard of accountability to the public in the Wilbert Rideau case. This famed prison journalist spent more than four decades in the Louisiana prison system for killing one person and trying to kill two others. He is an ex-felon attempting to redeem himself through the same Frey-like fakery and literary transgressions. His falsehoods have a far greater impact on the nation’s criminal justice community than Frey’s had on the “substance abuse recovery” industry. Rideau’s falsehoods become gospel to historians like University of Texas history professor David Oshinsky whose error-tainted review of In The Place of Justice appeared in The New York Times on June 13, 2010 and will be shared with many unsuspecting and impressionable history students.

            That’s why Rideau’s literary fraud must cease lest the true history of The Angolite and its role in the Louisiana prison system turn into a massive falsehood created by an unscrupulous and self-aggrandizing former prison journalist committed more to self-promotion than the truth. Frey’s falsehoods and embellishments were those of just another ex-dope fiend trying to feed on the public tit for sympathy with “horror” stories manufactured in a drug haze. Rideau’s assault on the truth and history, on the other hand, are as methodical and calculating as the violent rampage he engaged in on February 16, 1961 with far more serious historical implications, especially in the journalism and criminal justice arenas.