WILBERT RIDEAU: A VICTIM?
Beginning in the mid-1970s when Wilbert Rideau started receiving media attention that would ultimately transform him from a convicted murderer into an “award-winning prison journalist” and “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner,” Rideau understood the media value in playing the “victim card.” His favorite victimhood in prison—one the media really loved—was that he had been locked up 99.9 percent longer than any other inmate charged with murder in Louisiana. While the statistic itself was skeptical, what Rideau did not point out was that he committed a murder that was more heinous than 99.9 percent of all the murders ever committed in Louisiana.
Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), continues with the victimology angle. He said that white society in Lake Charles, Louisiana had marginalized him to such an extent by 1961 that he had to find a new life somewhere else. California was his place of choice. Robbing a bank was the only way to finance such a dramatic life change for a 19-year-old black “kid” in Lake Charles–even though his memoir stressed the point that he did not intend to rob the Gulf South National Bank on February 16, 1961. As Michael Fumento put it in his recent post on Forbes.com titled Cold Blooded Murderers Can Still Make a Killing:
“ … After all—Rideau was a victim of circumstances. He didn’t plan on robbing the bank, he said. The decision was spur of the moment after missing his bus home from work (a victim of public transportation!) …”
Rideau rode this “victim pony” during his fourth trial in January 2005 during to a manslaughter verdict—even though he robbed a bank, kidnapped three people, shot all three, and killed one. The other three convictions were reversed because he was a “victim” of excessive pretrial publicity, capital punishment juror discrimination, and racial discrimination.
Rideau’s memoir informs us that this lifetime pattern of victimization followed him into the “free world” after his release. During a luncheon engagement with two former Angola wardens, Rideau informed the pair that despite all his “journalism awards and honors,” he had “yet to be offered a job.” Of course, he was not surprised by that fact. “It would be a rare employer, TV station, or newspaper publisher who would be willing to hire a high-profile ex-con who has vocal detractors, some of whom may be their advertisers,” he wrote.
Damn, besides public transportation, Rideau was victimized by media “advertisers” as well! That’s some pretty heady stuff. The media business would not hire him because he was a “high-profile ex-con who [had] vocal detractors.” This is the same media that dubbed him “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner,” an “award-winning prison journalist,” and a “celebrated convict editor” during his incarceration. If we accept Rideau’s post-release assessment of the media as correct, then we can only conclude that the media foisted off on an unsuspecting public a convicted murderer they did not truly trust or believe in. It would seem that if he was indeed the great prison writer/journalist the media portrayed him to be, someone in the media would have offered him a job—even if it was the publisher of the Holly Ridge “Tater and Grits” weekly.
And what about the NAACP? This organization spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to set him free. You would think the black “civil rights” organization would be willing to hire the very person they had also help transform from a convicted murderer into a living civil rights “victim.”
These factors notwithstanding, I suspect that Wilbert Rideau’s lack of employment situation lies in the statement that he had “yet to be offered a job.” The free world job marketplace does not “offer” jobs. You have to “work” at getting a job. There’s no market for prison “big shots”—or “convict editors.” Rideau should have spent more time looking for a job—and being willing to take whatever came along, even minimum wage manual labor—than feeling the tingle of grass between his toes as he walked along the morning lawn. I’m sure it was a “revolting development” for the famous Angolite editor to realize that he was no longer the “big fish in a little pond” but rather a “small fish in a big pond.” He has made a point since the release of his memoir to let the media know he misses being a “big shot in prison.”
But my absolute favorite victimization story in Rideau’s memoir is the post-Katrina volunteer incident involving “the woman in scrubs.” Baton Rouge’s Catholic Charities asked Rideau and his partner (now wife) Linda Labranche to work with “first responders” coming to the Bellemont Hotel “for medical exams, immunizations, debriefing, counseling, and other assistance and services.” On his fifth day of volunteer duty at the hotel, a New Orleans Times Picayune reporter named Bruce Nolan arrived “to do a story on the turnaround oasis.”
If there’s one thing I know about Wilbert Rideau, he has an uncanny ability to sniff out any “reporter” in the house. A bloodhound on the scent of an escaping prisoner is no match for Rideau on the scent of a reporter. Nolan and Rideau chatted. The reporter, according to Rideau, asked the former “convict editor” to hang around until Nolan “finishe[d] his interview with the man in charge.”
The “woman in scrubs,” an angry nurse, strode “from across the room” to Rideau’s table and “edgily” told him: “Wilbert, you should have registered as a journalist.” Rideau responded by telling the “woman in scrubs” that he was not there as a journalist but a “volunteer.” She “immediately” walked away.
Rideau made a trip to the restroom only to learn from Labranche upon his return that the “woman in scrubs” had returned and “expressed hostility” at Rideau being at the hotel as a volunteer. Rideau said the angry nurse demanded to Labranche: “You think that of all the places he could have volunteered to help, he just happened to end up here. And you don’t think he’s going to write about this place?”
Later that night at home Rideau and Labranche received a telephone call from a Catholic Charities official who thanked him for the “wonderful job” he had been doing but the “woman in scrubs” had complained. “It’s unfortunate,” the official said, “but I know you wouldn’t want one bad apple to spoil all the good work you and Catholic Charities have done and are still doing at the turnaround oasis.” The official then suggested “for the greater good” that Rideau not return for volunteer duty.
Damn, if it isn’t “public transportation” victimizing Rideau, it’s that angry “woman in scrubs!”
But based on my personal history with Wilbert Rideau, I surmise that what happened at the Bellemont Hotel was this: Rideau pigeonholed Nolan to co-opt some of the media coverage for himself. The nurse saw the exchange and instinctively knew what was going on—and after hearing her version of the events, Catholic Charities also realized Rideau was trying to parlay his “volunteerism” into some favorable media coverage for himself. In effect, Rideau had to be the “big shot” of the volunteer effort—just being an anonymous “volunteer” doing good work was not enough. Common sense would have dictated that Rideau do everything in his power to avoid any media representative at such an event. He was not “the story”—“turnaround oasis” was the story. But Wilbert Rideau has never appeared in any life situation where he did not think he was “the story.” And that’s what happened at the Bellemont Hotel.
And now Rideau has his memoir—and once again he is “the story.” He just has to convince the American public that white society of Lake Charles convicted him three times of murder when it should have been manslaughter, that he was kept locked up 44 years in the Louisiana prison system because of racial discrimination, and that if he doesn’t become a “big shot” in the free world, it will be because of media “advertisers” and people like that “woman in scrubs.”
