Free Republic

At the Lafayette Visitors Center on Evangeline Thruway last Wednesday, Wilbert Rideau signs the guest register. He’s wearing a pair of tennis shoes, blue jeans, a gray sweatshirt, a jean jacket and a pair of dark aviator sunglasses. He walks outside to the deck overlooking a pond where large koi fish are swimming close to the water’s surface. “I’m amazed,” he says. “I’ve never seen fish this big before.” Large carp that look like oversized goldfish don’t amaze most people. But most people haven’t spent more than four decades of their lives behind bars. Rideau is just a few weeks...

"After more than 40 years behind bars, Rideau, convicted killer and celebrated prison journalist, walked out of the Calcasieu Parish Jail a free man. On his fourth trial, the jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The judge immediately sentenced him to 21 years, about half of his time served, and released him." http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-A1000/1106118054161880.xml?nola ________________ According to one of his surviving victims, Dora McCain, Mr. Rideau, "the most rehabilitated man in America," slit Julie Ferguson while she begged for her life. He shot Ms. McCain and Jay Hickman and left them for dead. Over the years, instead...

Hallelujah! After 44 years one of America's most famous convicts, a black man named Wilbert Rideau convicted of murdering a white woman in Louisiana during the Jim Crow era, is free. Headlines worldwide proclaim justice has been done. But they couldn't be more wrong. Justice is weeping. For Rideau remains what he was when I knew him 17 years ago - a cold blooded murderer.Three different juries convicted Rideau, now 62, of murder. But all were overturned on technicalities, providing Rideau an incredible fourth chance. This time he was convicted only of manslaughter, downgrading his sentence to a maximum of...

LAKE CHARLES, La. — A prison journalist who has had three convictions overturned in the 1961 killing of a bank teller went on trial for a fourth time today...... http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/nation/2985908