Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

           During his fourth murder trial conducted in Lake Charles, Louisiana in January 2005, famed prison journalist Wilbert Rideau faced an “aggressive cross examination” from Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant. The District Attorney was able to elicit some incriminating facts from the former prison editor that apparently did not register with the jury which rejected the state’s cold blooded murder theory and instead found the killer guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. These incriminating facts are nonetheless relevant to the public debate Rideau has generated with his recently released memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), in which he tries to convince the public that he did not intend to murder Julia Ferguson, Dora McCain, and Jay Hickman—the three bank employees he kidnapped on February 16, 1961 and took to a remote area in Calcasieu Parish where he killed Ferguson and seriously wounded McCain and Hickman.

            “I was 19 years old,” Rideau said, describing the crime. “It was ill-conceived. It was dumb.”

            19 years of age! Most people age 19 in 1961 could purchase liquor (and Rideau by his own admission was a frequent patron of local honky-tonks); could enlist in the military; could obtain a driver’s license; and, mostly importantly, could be tried as an “adult” for a crime. Clearly age did not diminish Rideau’s ability to reason, to make rational decisions, or to make informed choices.

            But what is more interesting (and certainly more telling) is Rideau’s observation that the decision to rob the Gulf South National Bank and take the three employees hostage was “ill-conceived” and “dumb.” He didn’t say the crime was “wrong;” only that it was “ill-conceived” and “dumb.” Only a sociopath would view the robbery of a bank, the kidnapping of three bank employees, the killing of one, and attempted killing of the other two as “ill-conceived” and “dumb.”

            What Rideau was actually saying is that he should have been “smarter” in the way he “conceived” the plot to rob the bank and kill off all the employees because they knew and could identify him.

            This assertion is given credence by the following exchange between the award-winning inmate journalist and Bryant.

            “You admit you murdered Julia Ferguson? Bryant asked.

            “I killed her, yes,” Rideau answered.

            Bryant then asked Rideau the difference between the two.

            “I didn’t intend to harm any of those people,” Rideau said.

            “You admit that you committed a homicide, but not a murder?” Bryant asked.

            “Yes,” Rideau replied.

            “In your mind it’s not a murder because it was not premeditated,” Bryant said.

            “Right,” Rideau answered.

            In his memoir Rideau said he panicked inside the bank when he learned the police were en route there. He decided to take Ferguson, McCain and Hickman hostage because he did not have time to tie them up and leave them unharmed in the bank as he initially planned. The famed prison journalist did not tell us how he had planned to tie up the three employees. He did not bring any rope or tape with him. He simply brought the murder weapons, a gun and a knife, and a suitcase to haul off the loot.

            Instead of just leaving the employees in the bank, Rideau decided to take them to the remote area near English Bayou with every intention of turning them loose and allowing them to walk back to town (he said). But when McCain and Hickman tried to escape immediately after arriving at the bayou, Rideau lamented that “everything [went] to hell” and “the gun went off, unintentionally or not—I didn’t know which. Everything happened very fast … like a blur. Hickman ran, and I started firing until the gun wouldn’t shoot anymore. Both women fell. Mrs. Ferguson got up. I ran to her and stabbed her. I was acting on panic and impulse.”

            “[And] what did you think would happen to [Julia Ferguson],” Bryant asked Rideau during the cross examination, “what did you think would happen when you stabbed a middle aged woman in the chest?”

            Rideau knew precisely what would happen. The statement that he stabbed Ferguson “on panic and impulse” is sheer bullshit! Why did he try to slit the middle aged woman’s throat then? His defense team managed to downplay the throat wound by depicting it as nothing more than a superficial cut. The nature of the wound has never been the issue. The issue is the “intent” behind inflicting it. Rideau admits to stabbing Ferguson in the chest, although he says it was “on panic and impulse.” And I assume he believes everyone should accept that he also cut the woman’s throat on “impulse” as well? A person does not cut someone’s throat either in “panic” or on “impulse.” Slitting someone’s throat has always been, and always will be, a sure sign of premeditation to kill. It makes no difference if Rideau inflicted a minor or a major wound to Ferguson’s throat. What matters is that he tried to cut her throat for the only reason anyone cuts someone’s throat: to make sure she was dead.

            Rideau also said he emptied the gun at the fleeing McCain and Hickman. That was the initial act of violence. Why did he even shoot at them to begin with if he truly planned to turn them loose? If he had not shot at them, there would have been no need to run over and stab Ferguson as he claims.

            Those two decisions—the shooting at McCain/Hickman and the cutting of Ferguson’s throat—will always be the death knell on Rideau’s “panic and impulse” defense. The jury may have bought the defense because it did not want to send him back to prison with a life sentence, but that does not mean the public must accept either the jury’s verdict or the “panic and impulse” defense reiterated in the memoir that the famed prison journalist committed a manslaughter and not a murder.