Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

The New York Times has long endorsed the journalism career of Wilbert Rideau. The famed prison journalist enjoys his celebrated professional standing today primarily because of the Times’ “sweat heart” relationship with the convicted murderer.

So when Random House released Rideau’s memoir, In the Place of Justice, it was inevitable that the Times would endorse the book even though, by the Times’ own admission, it is a journalistic piece of crap.

The Times reviewer, Dwight Garner, is clearly an unabashed Rideau apologist. He opens his May 4, 2010 interview, entitled One Man’s Hard Road, From Existing to Living, with the unsubstantiated observation that “Mr. Rideau wasn’t a bad kid. He was ashamed of his petty crimes, and that’s why, he says, he stopped going to school.”

What were Rideau’s petty crimes? Garner tells us that the killer’s first “real crime” was the robbery of a “Piggly Wiggly” in which he got “some costume jewelry” and $40. Garner said this robbery occurred in the mid-1950s. That would have made Rideau 13 or so. I don’t think robbing a Piggly Wiggly at age 13 in the mid-1950s was the act of a “good kid.”

But, of course, by Rideau’s logic, which has always been questionable at best, thievery was better than school. Why not quit? He could make more money stealing than going to school.

Then Garner takes the reader from this robbery that Rideau was so “ashamed” of to the crime that sent him to Louisiana’s death row. He Times writer described Rideau’s February 16, 1961 crime this way: “ … when Mr. Rideau was 19, he robbed a bank, hoping to steal enough money to start his life over in California. He took three bank employees as hostages and put them in a car. When they later tried to escape, he recklessly shot them (two survived) and stabbed one, a woman, to death. Mr. Rideau was black. His hostages were white. When he was arrested and brought to a local prison, a lynch mob of several hundred people awaited his arrival. He was lucky to make it through the night.”

Oh, my God, what a terrifying night for “Mr. Rideau”—he was indeed “lucky to make it through the night.” Well, Julia Ferguson didn’t make it through the night. Rideau made sure of that when he slashed her throat and stabbed her through the heart. Dora McCain and Jay Hickman were actually the real “lucky” ones who survived that terrifying night. Now here’s what really happened that night:

At 6:55 p.m. Rideau approached the back door of the Gulf National Bank and convinced vice president Jay Hickman to let him inside. Hickman did so because he knew and trusted the young black man. Rideau found bank employees Ferguson and McCain tallying the day’s deposits and receipts. The trio were stunned when the experienced robber pulled out his .22 pistol and ordered them to put all the money in the suitcase he had brought with him.

Rideau ordered the three hostages into McCain’s black-and-white British-made Vauxhall automobile. He told McCain to drive since it was her vehicle. He warned the hostages that they had better do everything he told them “because your life hangs on a string.”

I guess that’s not a “bad kid” talking. I will assume that once again he so “ashamed” that he was having to resort to “robbery” again to get what he wanted which, according to Garner, was “steal enough money to start his life over in California.”

Well, why not just rob a bank? He wanted, and was entitled, to that “new life” in California because of all that “racism” he had endured in Lake Charles. Surely that was enough reason to rob a bank and take three people hostages—well, it was if you were “ashamed” of doing it as Rideau was. Besides, as Rideau told the hostages, he was never going to get caught because he planned to have “plastic surgery” once he made good of his escape. Perhaps that’s why, under the weight of all that shame attributed to him by Garner, the kid who was not so bad toyed with Julia Ferguson’s in the car: ““What’s the matter, Mrs. Ferguson, You scared?”

After about twenty minutes of driving around, Rideau found the perfect isolated spot he had been looking for—the place where he could find some relief from all that shame welling up inside him. Garner leads us to believe that the hostages “tried to escape” but that’s an issue subject to debate. Dora McCain and Hickman said Rideau forced them out of the vehicle, made them line up side by side, and opened fire on them with the pistol. Garner expects us to believe that Rideau, overcome with all that shame, “recklessly” shot the three victims because they tried to flee. Whatever.

Wounded, Hickman bolted and ran across the marsh near the bayou. McCain fell directly in front of Rideau with a bullet wound to the neck. She feigned death. Rideau kicked her motionless body twice to make sure she was dead.

Now, Rideau’s supporters will tell you shame makes you do things like that. You kick people to make sure they’re dead.

Perhaps we should admire Rideau. Somehow, this “good kid” managed to get through the shame, and stress, of trying to kill three people, either by lining them up or shooting at them as they tried to flee, and turn his attention to Julia Ferguson who was trying to rise from the ground. At this point, Rideau told a jury in 2005 in Lake Charles that he was in a state of sheer panic. I’m sure The New York Times understands that too much shame can lead to a “panic attack” sufficient enough to make you try to kill three people.

“Please, Wilbert,” she pleaded as Rideau stood over her with the hunting knife, “think of my poor old daddy. What will he do without me?”

“Don’t worry, it will be quick and cool,” the panic-stricken killer told her as he pulled her head back and drew the knife across her exposed throat. He then stabbed her through the heart, at least once, to make sure that she was dead.

Throughout three decades of incarceration at the Louisiana State Penitentiary where he had unprecedented access to the news media, Rideau never once mentioned that he killed Julia Ferguson in a state of panic. To the contrary, he said he cut her throat because “I think I ran out bullets;” that he showed no mercy to his victims; that he ignored their pleas for mercy; that he was dangerous; that he “hated white people;” and that he should have been executed because his crime was so heinous and cold blooded.

Perhaps since he was not really a “bad kid” as Garner informs us, Rideau was too “ashamed” to talk about “panic” during his prison years The famed journalist told his 2005 jury that he never said anything about the “panic attack” while he was locked up because his “advisors” told him not to. Rideau truly believes that since those words actually rolled out of his mouth under oath, we should accept them as the gospel truth. After all, it was enough to convince Mr. Garner.

The Times reviewer then meandered the reader through Rideau’s terrible prison experiences and the remarkable way he rose above them to become America’s version of Nelson Mandella. But not even Garner can bring himself to rescue Rideau from the piece of journalistic bullshit he’s trying to pass off as a “compelling” literary work. Garner writes:

“The journalist and the memoirist in Wilbert Rideau, however, are sometimes at odds with each other. He is so dispassionate that his book never catches fire. It is a vital human document, but a less vital literary one. Jack Henry Abbott, in his 1981 book, ‘In the Belly of the Beast,’ wrote that he wanted to convey the ‘atmospheric pressure’ of being a long-term prisoner in America. Mr. Rideau’s account is a far slower-moving weather system.

“The book’s second half is rudderless … Mr. Rideau had the guts, and character, to not give up during his long campaign for release. But the accounts of his multiple appeals do not make for provocative reading, and they’re what fill this book after its midpoint. Even a dandy cameo by Johnnie Cochran, who worked briefly on Mr. Rideau’s case, can’t bring this section to life.”

Pope John a few years ago coin the simple phrase, “It is what it is.”

Rideau’s memoir is what it is, a piece of journalistic crap, chock full of factual errors and misrepresentations—and I’m being kind when I say that. I opened the book, read some of the sections dealing with me, and put it down. Even I was taken aback. I know most of Rideau’s journalism credentials were accrued off the sweat and toil of others; that he stole more credit than he ever truly earned. But I somehow felt that after five years of working on the “memoir project,” he would product another Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In the end, he couldn’t even produce a work that could be placed in the literary company of Jack Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast.

What’s worse is that the George Soros Foundation subsidized this literary fiasco to the tune of $75,000. There’s no excuse for the literary failure. Rideau hasn’t been steadily employed since his release, so he had more than enough time—days, months and years—to produce a book that is so “rudderless” most will put it on a shelf before they finish reading it.

And what does all this prove? The New York Times, and so many more in the mainstream media, manufactured a journalistic fraud. Wilbert Rideau is not the “great” writer he’s been made out to be. When a favorable reviewer finds it hard to get through the second half of your book, you’ve produced a dud.

My advice to anyone thinking about buying Rideau’s book to “learn” something about the prison world, save your money and watch MSNBC’s weekend lineup of “prison documentaries.”