WILBERT RIDEAU’S PROBLEM WITH THE TRUTH
Wilbert Rideau has always had a difficult time with the truth—telling it, that is. In my last post, I showed that he did not kill Julia Ferguson in a state of panic as he outlined in his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010). Specifically, I demonstrated how the former famed prison journalist lied about the way the killing of Ferguson actually occurred in that remote area of Calcasieu Parish on February 16, 1961; that rather than a “panic” killing, the murder of the bank teller was cold blooded, methodical, and execution-styled.
In the wake of that post and while cleaning out some old files, I came across some sworn legal pleadings Rideau submitted to federal court in connection with a lawsuit I had filed against him for plagiarizing four articles I had written for the prison publication The Angolite and which he published in a criminal justice textbook titled The Wall is Strong—an anthology of articles cannibalized from prison publications and free world newspapers that were used in a Lafayette university criminal justice course. Most of the articles in the textbook came from The Angolite and had appeared in the prison publication during my nine-year tenure with the magazine between 1977 and 1986. I have discussed at length the additional background facts and legal issues surrounding this lawsuit here, here, and here. No need for further elaboration here.
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, without prejudice, because none of the inmate-written articles that appeared in The Angolite had been copyrighted. In other words, they belonged to the public domain, although any ethical and responsible author/publisher gives proper attribution to any previously published material available in the public domain for reprinting.
Anyway, it was during the discovery process of this lawsuit that I learned Rideau (and his new co-editor of The Angolite, Ron Wikberg) had secured a contract with Random House to publish yet another cannibalized anthology of Angolite articles. Suspecting Rideau had once again submitted my work to another publisher and passed it off as his own, I contacted the New York-based publisher. Sure enough, the “award-winning convict editor” was up to his old plagiarizing tricks. He had submitted at least one article I had exclusively written for The Angolite and several more I had contributed significantly to.
Against that backdrop, the federal judge over my lawsuit permitted me to engage in discovery with Random House concerning its proposed anthology with Rideau/Wikberg. The publishing house ultimately agreed not to publish any of the articles I had claimed were exclusively written by me.
While this discovery process was playing out, I had been in contact with an English professor at the Louisiana State Penitentiary who had devised a computer analysis method for determining who wrote a given piece of literary work. He had examined all the articles I claimed to have written and was prepared to testify that I was indeed the sole author of those articles.
When Rideau learned about this development, the famed prison journalist resorted to a tactic he is most comfortable with in a crisis: he lied. In a sworn legal pleading to the court, Rideau tried to casually dismiss the expertise of the professor’s with the bullshit analogy: “With all due respect to Professor Fogel and the marvels of modern technology, the computer analysis described by the plaintiff cannot possibly establish ‘sole and exclusive’ authorship of ANY of the articles published during plaintiff’s tenure with THE ANGOLITE. The most such an analysis plaintiff describes could perhaps establish, is whose stylistic fingerprint’ primarily shows on the established copy of the article, that is, who mainly wrote or edited ‘the final draft.’ It cannot show who originated the idea for the article, who developed it, who did the research, the interviewing, who created the working outline, and the first, second or other intermediate drafts that preceded the final draft. In sum, it cannot show who did all the work necessary to create and produce a given piece of writing. If the plaintiff dismisses such CONTRIBUTIONS as unimportant or irrelevant, he possesses a unique (or skewed) understanding of what ‘exclusive’ versus ‘joint’ authorship entails.”
Does that mumbo-jumbo not sound like a lying, plagiarizing literary thief who had been cornered like a “wet rat” by the prospect of a “computer analysis” trapping him in his deception? He could see his fraudulent “award-winning” journalism reputation collapsing around him.
But what is significant about Rideau’s interpretation of “joint” authorship is that I should have been credited as co-author of every Angolite article reprinted in Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars (Three Rivers Press 1992) which had been published during my tenure with the prison publication. I could have used Rideau’s own words to sue Random House and the prison journalist, but that would have been a literary fraud. Although I contributed significantly to a number of the pieces which appeared in Life Sentences, I was not the “sole” author of them. In fact, Rideau’s article, “A Sexual Jungle” for which he received the 1979 George Polk Award, appeared in the June 12, 1980 edition of the Des Moines Sunday Register under the joint Rideau/Sinclair byline. I had contributed to the piece with ideas, editing and, re-writes, and that is why Rideau felt compelled to submit it to the Iowa newspaper under the joint Rideau/Sinclair byline. This was acknowledged in a preface to the article:
“Below are excerpts from one of the prize-winning articles, “Prison: The Sexual Jungle.” The article is based on observations at Angola and on interviews by Rideau and Sinclair with prisoners who have served time in a large number of jails and prisons.”
But the article was Rideau’s: it was his idea, his concept, and his final product, and he rightly presented it (and others he had exclusively written for The Angolite) to Random House for inclusion in Life Sentences. The hypocritical rub is that while he was passing the articles off to Random House as his exclusive work product, he was simultaneously telling a federal court that all the articles produced in the prison publication during our co-editorship were “jointly” written by the two of us; that there had been no “exclusive” authorship by either editor of any of the articles published in the magazine during our co-editorship.
This proverbial “talking out of both sides of his mouth” underscores what I have repeatedly said about Wilbert Rideau through this website: he lies to suit the occasion. He will say anything that serves his interest at any given moment. When an “award-winning” prison journalist embellishes his achievements, engages in plagiarism, and repeatedly fabricates events in his “memoir” (as has been documented here, here, and here), how could anyone possibly believe what he says about the crime that sent him to prison and kept him there 44 years.
The simple truth is that Dora McCain and Jay Hickman told the truth. Wilbert Rideau murdered Julia Ferguson in the premeditated manner he described in his own written confession given just days after his arrest.
