Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

Wilbert Rideau has a knack for taking events and putting a “spin” on them to make him out to be a “champion” of a cause or a “hero” to the rescue. The famed prison journalist does this throughout his memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010). It is an image-building tactic he has used over the past thirty-five years to create the celebrity and fame associated with his reputation as an “awarding-winning prison journalist.” I worked with the man for nine years. I came to understand quite well his uncanny talents at self-promotion. But Rideau’s reputation as a “fact-gathering investigative” journalist is seriously overblown. A careful reading of his memoir reveals he is in reality “spin doctor.”

This “spin” talent was illustrated in its purest form in Rideau’s memoir when he wrote about a 1989 “state of emergency” order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Frank J. Polozola following an outbreak of violence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. But to understand Rideau’s spin on this issue I must provide a bit of historical contest.

 In 1986 federal and state investigations uncovered a massive “pardons-for-sale” operation in place at the state penitentiary during Gov. Edwin Edwards’ third term in office. This corrupt operation was headed by former pardon board chairman Howard Marsellus and involved several ranking prison officials. Marsellus and Rideau were, for want of a better description, political allies. I have blogged about their relationship on this site. Rideau dubbed Marsellus as a “symbol of hope.”

 My wife and I were the “whistleblowers” who exposed this corruption to federal authorities in August 1986. At the time I was co-editor with Rideau of The Angolite, the prison’s newsmagazine. Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps and Rideau were angry at my role in exposing this corruption to law enforcement authorities. Both men collaborated to seek revenge against me at every level. Rideau by thrashing me in the news media with charges that I had betrayed the “integrity” of The Angolite by becoming an “FBI informant.” He was so successful in these efforts that he orchestrated an editorial damning me as a “snitch” in The New York Times. This is the level of influence he had, and continues to have, with the nation’s news media. Phelps, on the other hand, tried to have me removed from “protective custody” at the Louisiana State Police Barracks and returned to Angola where I would surely have been killed. This information was conveyed to me by former State Police Chief Inspector Joe Whitmore and confirmed to me by former State Police Superintendent Wiley McCormick who said he resisted pressure from the “highest levels” to have me sent back to Angola.

As a collateral consequence of its “pardons-selling” investigation, the State Police, through its lead investigator Whitmore, developed information about substantial other criminal wrongdoing and official corruption at the state penitentiary. Some of this information had been provided by me during debriefing sessions with Whitmore and East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney Charles Grey. However, most of the information was provided by Chris McAlister who bought a pardon for $5,000 from Marsellus and agreed to cooperate with state authorities under a grant of immunity. McAlister was a drug dealer and henchman for the infamous gang, the Dixie Mafia, whose leaders were incarcerated at Angola and who were responsible for much of the criminal wrongdoing and corruption targeted for investigation by the State Police. McAlister’s drug dealing activities enjoyed the protection of former Angola Custody Warden Prentice Butler who had an unholy alliance with the prison’s Deputy Warden, Hilton Butler. These two officials were protégés of Secretary Phelps and had a cozy relationship with Rideau and The Angolite operation.

 When it became obvious that the State Police were investigating the “Butler clique” in early 1987, Phelps stepped in, shut down the investigation, and ordered Whitmore and his fellow investigators to stay away from Angola. The pardons-for-sale scandal had seriously damaged not only his department but the political machine of Gov. Edwards. The corrections secretary knew the State Police would uncover more criminal wrongdoing linked to the “Butler clique” if their investigation continued. Frank Blackburn had just stepped down as the prison’s warden and Phelps had replaced him with Hilton Butler. Rideau praised Hilton Butler in his memoir as “an old-line guard who had been ‘rehabilitated’ by Phelps and Blackburn.” Butler, who had actually run the day-to-day operations of the prison during Blackburn’s lax tenure, installed an even more lax operation conducive to official corruption and inmate criminal wrongdoing after he became the prison’s head warden. It was also the kind of administration under which Rideau and The Angolite flourished with “insider” influence and special privileges.

In March 1988 reformed-minded Charles “Buddy” Roemer officially became governor of Louisiana. Roemer replaced Phelps as corrections secretary with a farmer and banker named Bruce Lynn. With Phelps out of the way, the State Police made plans to resume its criminal investigation of the “Butler clique” at Angola. Investigators, however, quickly learned that Secretary Lynn really did not have a desire to re-open the investigation; that it was best to “let sleeping dogs lie.” He was committed to keeping Hilton Butler as Angola’s warden for the time being, although the new corrections administration was less than enthusiastic about The Angolite operation.

As evidence of this anti-Angolite sentiment, Rideau said that in December 1988 Gov. Roemer “plucked” the editor’s 60-year clemency recommendation out of the air and denied it. The famed prison journalist at that point realized the privileged status he had enjoyed under Phelps/Blackburn/Butler administrations was imperiled. He enlisted two Shreveport newspapers, the Journal and the Sun, both of whom were his supporters, to criticize Roemer for denying his clemency recommendation. This was followed by a New Orleans Times Picayune op-ed piece written by columnist named James Gill that endorsed Rideau’s release and criticized his continued incarceration as some kind of “victimization.”

It was at this point in the memoir, in a chapter titled “Soldiering On,” that Rideau made two things “perfectly clear”: he did not like Gov. Roemer and Hilton Butler was the quintessential warden.

 In 1989 the prison in fact experienced a series of escapes, suicides, and inmate assaults. Still stinging from Roemer’s abrupt denial of his clemency recommendation, Rideau embarked upon a concerted campaign to blame this rash of violence on a climate of “hopelessness” at the prison—a climate the convict editor said was produced by Roemer’s conservative clemency policy. He framed this campaign on the following premise expressed in his memoir: “Hopelessness is contagious. Governor Roemer’s policies fed despair at Angola.” And with slight of the hand he simultaneously praised Butler for engaging in creative penal management in a futile effort to stave off the hopelessness caused by Gov. Roemer.

The Angolite quoted Butler’s security chief, Mike Gunnells, as saying: “If the governor would take a close look at what’s happening in the penal system, and if he’d help some of the people who deserve help, it would do a lot to improve the situation.” And The Angolite’s supervisor, Roger Thomas, chimed in: “In all my research and prison experience, I haven’t run across any other point in time where we’ve experienced a similar rash of desperate acts by the kind of prisoners who don’t normally do these kinds of things.”

Rideau’s memoir then implied that in response to this Angolite criticism, “Governor Roemer [also] plucked out the board’s recommendation of clemency for Ron Wikberg [co-editor of the prison publication], a model prisoner, to deny.” He further implied that the corrections department began to retaliate against him personally by reducing the frequency of his outside speaking engagements. He blamed Secretary Lynn, whom he described as a “cotton farmer” with “no experience in corrections,” as the person responsible for the convict editor’s dramatically reduced travel schedule.

On June 22, 1989 Judge Polozola’s  declared the “state of emergency” at Angola, citing “four suicides, four murders, eleven escapes, and sixty-four stabbings” as the basis for the order. Rideau’s memoir criticized the federal judge because he failed to mention that hopelessness born of Roemer’s lean clemency policy was the root cause for the violence.

Polozola appointed former Angola Warden Ross Maggio, a man with impeccable credentials for honesty and fighting corruption, to investigate the prison. Rideau took pains to point out that Maggio was a “longtime political adversary of Warden Butler,” implying the former warden would conduct his investigation with a biased agenda. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Maggio was not a politician. He simply had zero tolerance for corrupt and lawless penal management which had hallmarked Butler’s career in corrections. That’s exactly why Maggio ran Butler out of Angola during Maggio’s second tenure as the prison’s warden between 1981 and 1984—the apparent basis for Rideau’s “political adversary” charge.

Polozola also instructed Assistant U.S. Attorney Ray Lamonica to conduct any criminal or civil investigations necessary to find out exactly what was going on at Angola.

Rideau’s memoir stated that The Angolite “had kept our media friends abreast of the growing problems [so] they had a frame of reference for what was actually happening [at Angola].” As a matter of fact, Rideau was quoted in the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate as saying in response to Polozola’s order: “Model prisoners do not commit suicide because of drugs, mismanagement, low employee morale, corruption, or any of the things Polozola is complaining about. They do so because of hopelessness, the same reason law-abiding citizens take their own lives. To suggest otherwise means there’s some kind of political agenda.”

Rideau’s charge that Roemer’s lean clemency policy was the cause of the increased violence at the prison was, and remains, ridiculous. Angola prisoners did not engage in such behavior during the lean clemency years under Gov. Dave Treen (1980-84), Gov. Mike Foster (1996-2004), Gov. Kathleen Blanco (2004-08), or Gov. Bobby Jindal (2008-present). The violence was caused by Hilton Butler’s lax, irresponsible and lawless management style that fostered corruption and violence—the very kind of penal administration favored by Rideau because he enjoyed more influence and power to wage his “freedom effort” under those kinds of penal administrations.

But Rideau’s hopelessness “scam” managed to sucker the state’s media down the proverbial rabbit hole. Some began to question, and even criticize, Roemer for his conservative clemency policy—the very same media which had constantly criticized Edwards for having a “liberal” clemency policy. Roemer responded by telling the media: “I do not believe that is the problem [for the violence]. I think that is an excuse.” The governor was right. Inmate hopelessness does not cause a prison to spiral out of control; corrupt and lax penal management does.

Rideau said Maggio visited him in The Angolite office, cautioning the editor to be “careful” about what he said in public about Polozola. The convict editor also stated Maggio offered him an opportunity to “roll over” on Hilton Butler but he refused to do so. I was not there so I don’t know what was said between Maggio and Rideau. But I know Ross Maggio. The former warden did not need Wilbert Rideau as a “snitch” to nail Hilton Butler to the cross. There was enough evidence of official corruption and criminal wrongdoing floating around Angola to have put Butler in the prison himself.

Rideau’s memoir goes on to state that one week after Polozola’s order, July 1, Gov. Roemer commuted the sentences of nine inmates, and that on July 6 the governor conceded to the media that perhaps he had been too “rigid” in his clemency approach. And on July 10 the parole of a long term inmate named James “Black Mattie” Robinson made “front-page news” with the inmate praising The Angolite for his freedom. And on July 14 Judge Polozola conducted a hearing at which the federal judge “expressed displeasure not only at how officials had handled the issue of Angola but also with the larger corrections problem in Louisiana,” particularly by not addressing the problem of inmate overcrowding. Rideau said these comments “lifted spirits throughout the prison” by creating the prospect that some “deserving men might be released.” And, finally, on July 23 the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate gave inmates “another powerful dose of hope” with a story about Roemer’s new and improved clemency policy which “recognized that there had to be hope and room for rehabilitation in it.”

Rideau took complete credit for all these changes: “We were all smiles in the Angolite office,” he wrote. “Who would have believed it? But I reminded my colleagues that you don’t cross swords with a governor or federal judge and walk away buddies. It was reasonable to assume that somewhere down the line, it would cost us.”

What Rideau’s memoir omits is that Judge Polozola also expressed serious concern about information he had received that the Corrections Department had stymied the State Police’s efforts to investigate Angola in 1987 and1988. In response to the judge’s concern, Gov. Roemer on July 24 created a 17-man State Police Task Force headed by Major Bonnie Fussel to investigate all the information the agency had received in the wake of the “pardons-for-sale” scandal about corruption and criminal wrongdoing at Angola. A tough, no-nonsense law enforcement official, Fussel promptly tagged Whitmore to lead the agency’s investigation at the prison.

Several weeks into the State Police’s investigation Maggio submitted the findings of his investigation to Judge Polozola. That report essentially found that the “rash of escapes, suicides, and murders” had been caused by Hilton Butler’s mismanagement and security deficiencies, not inmate hopelessness as suggested by Rideau and The Angolite. Gov. Roemer hailed Maggio’s report as being “right on target” and told the media his administration would “enact steps” to correct the problems brought out in the report. Hilton Butler did not wait to be fired. He resigned the very next day. Rideau’s memoir tried to undermine the credibility of Maggio’s report by saying Maggio had maintained some of the same policies during his tenure as Angola’s warden for which he had criticized Butler in the report.

But even more importantly Rideau’s memoir failed to mention that the State Police investigation uncovered a $4 million “homosexual mail scam” which had operated at the prison throughout Butler’s tenure as deputy warden and warden. The scam was headed by Dixie Mafia leader Kirksey McCord Nix, Jr.—the man who ordered the contract killing of a Mississippi judge and his wife from Angola in early 1987 and which was carried out in September of that year. The details of the contract murder of Judge Sherry and his wife and the Angolite’s connection to those horrible killings can be found in another blog posted on this website under the title “Did The Angolite Contribute to the Sherry Murders?”

Rideau’s memoir also failed to disclose that the State Police investigation resulted in the firing of Prentice Butler for being directly tied to Chris McAlister’s drug dealing operation. Or that the investigation resulted in the indictment of F. Berlin Hood for two counts of public bribery. One of those counts involved Angolite staffer Leonard Pourciau (a McAlister associate and also a favorite of Prentice Butler) who bought a sentence reduction from Marsellus through Hood. Or that several other prison officials were also indicted while others were forced to resign without indictment because of criminal wrongdoing.

In The Place of Justice omits any mention of instances of wrongdoing and corruption under the very administration praised by Rideau because the famed prison journalist could not wrap them around “inmate hopelessness”—a fact the Louisiana media did not report about in 1989 and has not reported since the release of the memoir.

Prior to Hood’s 1989 indictment, I had no concrete knowledge that Pourciau had bought a pardon from Marsellus. McAlister had told me at the State Police Barracks that The Angolite staffer had made a “deal” with the pardon board chairman through Hood and that a “painting” was part of the deal.

I knew Marsellus had requested through Rideau that Pourciau paint a portrait of the pardon board chairman. The Angolite artist initially resisted the suggestion telling Rideau that what Marsellus wanted was really a “$5,000 free painting.” I was present in Pourciau’s art room when Rideau told the staffer that if he did not paint the portrait, he could forget getting a “time cut from Marsellus.”

“If Poochie doesn’t paint the portrait,” Rideau told me later in The Angolite office, “Marsellus is not going to do a fucking thing for him, and I don’t blame him. Poochie’s got to understand you take care of the people who can help you.”

That portrait was the proverbial “icing on the cake” to the money Pourciau had already paid Marsellus for the pardon. But the pardon board chairman was a greedy man. He had done the same thing with McAlister: charged the drug dealer $5,000 for his pardon only to later extort him for an additional $2500 in jewelry.

I have no knowledge, or reason to believe, that Rideau was aware of the fact that Pourciau had already paid Marsellus money for a pardon when the chairman demanded the portrait. What I do know is that Rideau knew the portrait was a corrupt quid pro quo for Pourciau getting a pardon.

In their 1987 campaign to trash me, Rideau and Phelps had strenuously denied that The Angolite had in any way been involved with Marsellus’ pardons-selling operation when, in fact, they magazine was knee-deep in the corruption. Phelps knew McAlister had named Pourciau as having bought a pardon from Marsellus through Hood. And Rideau knew his personal relationship with Marsellus was suspect, especially the quid pro quo arrangement he conveyed to Pourciau from the pardon board chairman about the portrait. The two men knew that both the prison and The Angolite were safe from the “taint of corruption” beyond the “pardons-for-sale” scandal so long as Hilton Butler was warden because Butler had his own ass to protect with the $4 million Dixie Mafia scam operating with his quasi-official blessing and Prentice Butler protecting the prison’s drug trafficking.

Thus, the last thing Rideau wanted, or needed, in 1989 was Polozola’s “state of emergency” order and the law enforcement scrutiny it would generate. So he spun the “hopelessness” issue around the outbreak of violence at Angola to divert attention from the corruption he knew existed there. The convict editor no longer had Phelps to protect The Angolite; his only source of protection was Hilton Butler so he had to cover for the warden’s lax security which he knew was the real cause for the groundswell of violence that prompted Polozola’s order. So he framed the “hopelessness” debate because it made “good copy” and diverted media attention from the real problems at the prison.

The Louisiana media not only drank Rideau’s “hopelessness” kool aid, they swam in it—and this’s why The Angolite staff, almost all of whom were convicted murderers, sat around in the office “all smiles” because, as the convict editor boasted,  he had backed down a governor and a federal judge and forced the media to see things his way. That boast is not only stunning but fucking obnoxious. And, significantly, no one in the Louisiana media has refuted this prosperous claim: that Wilbert Rideau stood tall and personally brought about the changes he outlined in his memoir in the wake of his public criticism of Judge Polozola.

And therein lies the rub: if the Louisiana media were to challenge anything Rideau said in his memoir that would be a tacit admission that they made a mistake all those years they promoted him as a “famed prison journalist” and “prison expert.” Who in the media is going to say two decades after the fact that the 1989 outbreak of violence was not caused by “inmate hopelessness” but by “official corruption?” No one.

And what are the facts to support my view? Well, Kirksey McCord Nix and six others were convicted in the contract murders of the Sherrys; F. Berlin Hood was indicted and pled guilty to bribery in connection with the Pourciau deal; Hilton Butler resigned; Prentice Butler was fired; and host of other prison officials either resigned or were indicted. All this official corruption would not have been revealed had it not been for Judge Polozola’s “state of emergency” order which that Wilbert Rideau criticized as having “some kind of political agenda.”

Judge Polozola, Ross Maggio, former Gov. Buddy Roemer, and the State Police know what was really behind the outbreak of violence at Angola in 1989, and it had nothing to do with inmate hopelessness caused by Gov. Roemer’s executive clemency policy.