Prisoner’s Release After 44 Years Reopens a Town’s Old Wounds

For those old enough to remember what happened here, the emotions are as ragged as they were in 1961 when Wilbert Rideau, a young black porter, robbed a bank and took three white hostages, killing one and leaving two for dead in a muddy bayou outside of town.

You can see it in the hard set of Nonie Guthridge’s mouth when Rideau’s name is spoken. “Oh. Him,” she said. “That man got away with murder. You don’t want to know what else I think.”

And it’s in the indignation of electrical contractor Kenneth Rue, hoisting himself into his truck with an emphatic whoosh. “What do you have to do to be put in jail for murder?” he said.

Rideau was released last weekend, 44 years and four trials after he admitted to the crimes, committed when he was 19 and virtually illiterate. Behind bars, he educated himself and became an award-winning prison journalist and civil rights activist sometimes allowed to travel for public appearances.

Some in this industrial port city of 71,757 figure that he is, as he has been dubbed, “the most rehabilitated inmate in America.” Some are too young or too new to the area to care much about him at all.

But the racial overtones and multiple trials have given the case an enduring notoriety. And Rideau’s new status as a free man is enough to make many in this town sick with anger.

At the Majestic Barbershop, a white-haired man who would not give his name could barely contain his fury when Rideau’s name came up.

He said he had worked at the Gulf National Bank that Rideau robbed. And that he watched as Jay Hickman, the bank manager who was shot in the arm and fell into the bayou, and Dora McCain, the teller who feigned death after being shot and kicked by Rideau, fought to recover from the ordeal. Teller Julia Ferguson died after being shot and then stabbed in the chest with a hunting knife.

He saw how the survivors’ hands trembled, how they later withdrew from life altogether, afraid to step outside their homes.

“He stabbed a woman to death and ruined the lives of others. No one was the same. He’s out of jail and free to live his life. You tell me how that’s justice.” He turned his back and walked away, caught up in his memories.

The barbershop fell silent, except for the soft snipping of scissors. Men waiting for haircuts looked down at their newspapers.

“A lot of people feel that way,” barber Ron Guillory finally said. “They say he’s rehabilitated, but that doesn’t change the fact that he killed someone.”

Rideau was convicted of capital murder three times by all-white juries. Each time appeals courts threw out the verdicts, citing government misconduct.

At his fourth trial, a mixed-race jury decided that Rideau had not planned to kill but had panicked during the robbery. Because the murder was not premeditated, his crime was reduced to manslaughter. His new sentence was set for time already served -- a term more than twice the 21-year maximum for manslaughter.

Rue, 64, the electrical contractor, said the jury’s logic didn’t sit well with many.

“[Rideau] knows there’s hard feelings,” Rue said. “It’s best that he stays away. If he came back, he’d be pushing up daisies.”

The Rev. J.L. Franklin, a spokesman for a coalition of black ministers who worked for Rideau’s release, worried that the resentment in Lake Charles could turn into violence.

Supporters have long argued that Rideau’s race -- and his fame, the result of award-winning exposes and an Oscar-nominated documentary on prison life -- had kept him in prison while others serving time for similar crimes had been released.

Last weekend’s verdict “took the white community by surprise,” Franklin said. “They’re in shock. The tension could build or subside. There’s a delicate balance right now. It could go either way.”

An online survey conducted by a local television station showed that the majority of those who responded thought Rideau should not have been released.

To counter that sentiment, 150 of his supporters had planned to drive to the Calcasieu Parish jail last weekend when Rideau was to sign his final release papers. But the potential for a clash between townspeople prompted officials to process the paperwork in Baton Rouge.

Since his release, Rideau has stayed out of the public eye and not revealed where he is staying.

Resident Allen Mitchell was to be part of the caravan, but he didn’t really expect a showdown in Lake Charles.

Racial tensions are less overt these days, even in this corner of rural Louisiana, he said.

“People will smile at you now, but it doesn’t reach their eyes or face,” Mitchell said. “There’s prejudice, but it’s more toned down.”

When Rideau was arrested in 1961, a mob gathered at the jail and muttered threats of a lynching. When Rideau was released last weekend, the anger was channeled through e-mails sent to Rideau’s lawyers.

Lake Charles, built on oil and natural gas, now also draws on the tourist trade, attracting gamblers with riverboat casinos and huge platters of crawfish. Festive purple and gold Mardi Gras banners hang from lightpoles downtown, where there’s a juice bar, a Chinese buffet and shops filled with souvenirs.

Down the road is the graceful, copper-domed courthouse where Rideau was first tried. In front stands a tall monument to the Confederacy. “The South’s Defenders 1861-1865. Our Heroes,” the inscription reads.

Rideau’s old neighborhood is a few miles north of the courthouse, in what was known as the colored part of town. Neatly trimmed lawns surround small, weathered wood-frame houses. Rideau’s family house on Brick Street was torn down years ago to make way for a new middle school. His mother, Gladys Semien, moved to another house nearby and has lived in semiseclusion.

“She mainly keeps to herself, except to go to church,” said Edna Hardy, 80, who lives nearby. Hardy wonders how Semien endured. “Maybe she didn’t have anywhere else to go. At least the waiting is over for her.”

A few blocks away, Vincent Green held court in the driveway of an auto inspection shop. He is addressed as mayor because of his longtime residency here. Green, 81, came home from work the night of the murder and saw Brick Street filled with flashing police lights.

Too many years have passed since then. People need to move on, he said. “Rideau has done his time. Let him be.... He educated himself in prison. He can do something with himself now.... He can show younger people that they can fix their lives.”

Joseph Narcisse, 57, said that many of his neighbors were preaching forgiveness but that he was of two minds. It’s right that Rideau was released if that’s the jury’s decision, he said.

“I’ve got to go by the law,” he said. “But I wouldn’t feel the same if it was my sister or mother who was killed. Anyone would say the same.”

Still, Rideau’s crime loosens its hold here with each passing year.

Hickman, the man he shot, died in 1988. McCain, the other surviving hostage, is rarely seen without a scarf around her neck to hide her scars and was too frail to attend Rideau’s last trial. Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards -- who turned down Rideau’s request for parole -- began serving a 10-year prison sentence for extortion in October 2002.

At a shopping center west of downtown, Rideau’s name momentarily drew a blank with Trista Semien, 21. “Oh, him,” she said. “I don’t necessarily agree with [the verdict], but if he’s improved himself, I guess it’s OK that he’s out.”

No one she knows is too upset about Rideau’s release or, for that matter, even talking about it. “I guess it’s not an issue,” she said.

She was heading toward the Books-A-Million store, which is attached to a coffee bar that sells $4 lattes. The Gulf National Bank once stood there, she was told. She studied the building as if to reconcile the cheerful faux stucco facade with a murder that has hung over this town for four decades.

She offered an apologetic shrug. “It happened a long time ago,” she said.