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In a three-part series the Times of Acadiana examines the "long and peculiar career" of Wilbert Rideau, a local prisoner who was arrested and tried for the murder of Julia Ferguson in 1961. Rideau, a slender black boy at the time of his arrest has since then become an award-winning journalist and editor of the prison news magazine. In 2001 he is now facing a fourth trial. The problem is that most witnesses of the crime are dead and the murder weapons are missing, the Times reports. The series depicts the political and social climate of Louisiana in 1961 and Rideau's efforts toward rehabilitation.