Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

           A reader of this website recently inquired as to wrote the post, “The Rideaus: Grant Hustlers?” I informed the reader that I was the author of the article. I am the author of all the articles on this website—and there have been 81 of them posted since April 2010. My wife, Jodie, has contributed significantly to these articles with ideas, suggestions, and editing.

            This latest comment certainly raises the legitimate question about why I created this website and why I continue to post articles on it. I will explain in very succinct terms the reasons for both. Wilbert Rideau and I had a professional relationship for nine years as co-editors of The Angolite, the official inmate publication at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. During that period, Rideau and I were individual recipients of the George Polk Award, the ABA Silver Gavel Award, and the magazine was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy and Sidney Hillman journalism awards.

            During that nine-year relationship, I saw that Rideau was an idea thief, a master manipulator, a liar, and an individual who “hogs the credit” for any joint venture with anyone else, no matter what it is. Our relationship, of course, ended badly in 1986 after it was revealed that I had assisted federal authorities in uncovering the largest “pardons-selling” operation in the history of Louisiana—a criminal enterprise in which Rideau had knowledge of and played a significant role in.

            In the wake of my departure from The Angolite, Rideau launched a crusade to destroy my reputation as an award-winning journalist by telling media outlets, including the New York Times, that I had violated the integrity of the prison publication by becoming an informant for the FBI. This crusade was launched with the active encouragement of former Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps. Both men had mutual self-serving interests in initiating and maintaining this crusade: Phelps was trying to damage control massive corruption at the state penitentiary which went far beyond the pardons-selling conspiracy and Rideau was trying to cover up his own involvement in the pardons-selling conspiracy which included his assistance brokering a criminal pardon deal for a member of the Angolite staff. This information has been detailed in numerous previous posts on this website—and has never been refuted by any media outlet or Rideau supporters.

            So when Rideau announced he planned to pen his memoir following his 2005 release from the Louisiana prison system, I fully expected to be a target of his literary wrath, and, sure enough, he launched broadsided attacks on both  me and Jodie. I’m a big boy. I can handle any legitimate criticism from Rideau. He has every right to explain his “side of the story” about our relationship and the reasons for its breakup. What Rideau doesn’t enjoy is a literary license to lie with professional impunity. I have refuted all the lies Rideau told about me and Jodie through previous posts here.

            Of course, Rideau supporters will accuse me of having self-serving reasons for refuting the erroneous information about me and Jodie in his memoir. And that is a legitimate observation, one I understand completely. And had the former convict editor and “media darling” simply confined his lies and misrepresentations to me and Jodie, I probably would have let that roll off my back like water off a duck. But Rideau went much further with his lies and misrepresentations. He lied about conversations and events involving former Angola Wardens Ross Maggio and John Whitley—something that could be easily verified by the media contacting those gentlemen—and beyond his criticism and disdain for current Angola Warden Burl Cain, the former “most rehabilitated prisoner in America” insinuated that Cain either orchestrated or was somehow involved in a “conspiracy” to kill hm.

            And beyond the lies and misrepresentations about these prison officials, there are a score of factual errors and fabrications in Rideau’s memoir designed to either re-write or reshape The Angolite’s and Angola’s history to embellish the former famed prison journalist’s accomplishments and achievements. I have also detailed and documented these factual errors and fabrications in previous posts. I did so because the “public record” needs to be set straight with facts—not Rideau’s distortions and manipulations of it. I was not only at the prison game, I was one of its major players. So as the old adage goes, “you can fool the fans but not the players” applies here.

            So as long as the media continues to provide Wilbert Rideau with a public forum in which to promote his memoir, I will continue setting the public record straight even if it hair lips his media buddies. I don’t need or want publicity—and I certainly don’t need the public to see me as a famous former “award-winning prison journalist.” Both of these are vitally important to Rideau—he’s gone so far as to lament how he misses the status, power and influence he enjoyed in prison during his tenure with The Angolite. He’s desperately trying to establish the same position in the free world with his Soros Foundation subsidized memoir (and it literally makes me sick to think of the number of computers the $150,000 the Soros Foundation gave to Rideau and his wife for their bogus literary endeavors would have placed in classrooms where underprivileged children are daily struggling to not only survive but become useful, productive members in the community while Rideau bemoans the fact that he not an “important” inmate anymore).

            So that’s why I continue to post articles, like this one, on this website. Anyone doing an Internet search about Wilbert Rideau will find this website and read some of its posts. And they can draw their own conclusions.