225BatonRouge.com

‘Morbid curiosity” drew Leo Honeycutt to the federal detention center in Oakdale in December 2004 to see the prison’s most famous inmate.

Weeks earlier, former Gov. Edwin Edwards had sent Honeycutt a message: Would you be interested in collaborating with Edwards on an authorized biography?

The former host of WBRZ’s morning show, 2une In, and now a local public relations executive, Honeycutt wasn’t particularly interested. “There was a lot about Edwards I didn’t like,” Honeycutt admits.

After all, Edwards was disgraced. To many, he was emblematic of everything corrupt about Louisiana politics. In prison since October 2002, when he began serving 10 years on racketeering charges, Edwards was approaching 80 and represented a period in Louisiana history that many want to forget.

But Honeycutt was intrigued. He made the 130-mile drive, if only to “sit down with him and just see what he’s thinking these days.”

As Honeycutt entered the visiting room in the metal building where Edwards waited, the former governor—now inmate No. 03128-095—greeted him with body language that “seemed to say to me, ‘Don’t you look at me like [I’m] an inmate.’”

Honeycutt didn’t judge Edwards. They sat and talked. And soon Honeycutt was sold. He would help Edwards write his book.

Out of all the journalists and historians in Louisiana, why did Edwards invite Honeycutt to Oakdale? “I chose Leo,” Edwards writes in a letter, “because I have known him many years and thought he would be able to get help doing research and that his contact with the media would serve the venture by affording him publicity to talk about the book as he worked on it.”

Over time, what began as a straightforward business arrangement has blossomed into a close friendship. “My relationship [with Leo] has grown,” Edwards writes, adding, “We have become very good friends.”

But as they began working on the book—talking for about three hours every two or three months—Edwards wouldn’t open up. He certainly wouldn’t reveal what Honeycutt most wanted—Edwards’ deepest emotions, without the veneer, spin and political rhetoric.

“He’s hidden it from me very well,” Honeycutt says, adding that their talks are usually punctuated with Honeycutt interrupting to say something like, “Look, are you just telling me this because you are trying to win me over to your sympathy or is this what you really, truly believe?”

After almost three years, Honeycutt still wonders if he’s cracked Edwards’ tough shell. “The most difficult question I think you can ask a person is: Tell me who you are,” Honeycutt says. “Don’t tell me what you do or what your career is, where you live, where you go to church. Just tell me who you are.”

That’s a question Edwards still has difficulty answering, Honeycutt says. “I think Edwin built up the character of governor over a 25-year period and he so lost his identity in that, that he now has a sense of what he’s accomplished. But as a sense of who he is, I think he struggles with that as much as I struggle trying to get the answer out of him.”

Honeycutt, 51, is no trained historian. Before this project, the former broadcast journalist (he was a special correspondent for ABC’s Good Morning America in the early 1990s) had written a novel, but never a work of nonfiction. What may have appealed to Edwards, however, was his prospective biographer’s sincerity and his engaging personality, tempered by a direct, no-nonsense style.

Honeycutt dived into the project. He spent dozens of hours with Edwards, taking notes on the pen and paper provided by the prison (he’s not allowed to tape record his interviews, nor can he bring along his own pen and pad). He interviewed several dozen people who knew Edwards the best—family members, friends, former aides and some adversaries.

“The trouble is they were all telling me the same thing,” Honeycutt says. “And they were all saying, ‘He never asked me to do anything wrong. He never even asked me to go into a gray area.’”

Suspecting that he wasn’t getting the full story from Edwards, and certain that his interviews with friends and associates weren’t much more forthright, Honeycutt hit the library, digging up thousands of news clippings about Edwards from his earliest days in Louisiana politics. “I didn’t care as much about what people’s remembrances were,” he explains, “as what actually happened at the time.”

The result is a comprehensive story of Edwards’ life and career, an 1,800-page manuscript that Honeycutt is now feverishly trying to cut by 1,000 pages.

After immersing himself in everything Edwin Edwards for almost three years, Honeycutt says he’s somewhat surprised to conclude that the former governor isn’t as bad or corrupt as many believe.

Of the numerous federal investigations throughout Edwards’ four terms as governor, Honeycutt has concluded: “It was a series of investigations that went nowhere.” Honeycutt is technically correct. Edwards was finally convicted for criminal activity that occurred after his last term as governor.

By the time of Edwards’ federal trials in 1985 and 1986 on charges of mail fraud, obstruction of justice and bribery (for which he was ultimately acquitted), Honeycutt believes the public concluded—acquittal notwithstanding—that their fast-talking, casino-loving governor was ethically challenged, if not outright corrupt.

“People finally started to wear out on this and they go, ‘You know, god, Edwin is being looked at again for something,’” Honeycutt argues. “They always assumed because there was smoke, there had to be fire someplace.”

Honeycutt says he’s swept out all the smoke from Edwards’ life and is left with believing he was not nearly as bad as everyone thought he was. “There’s only two ways to look at this: If Edwards was guilty of what he was charged with (in the 1980s) and he got off. If he was really guilty, you’re calling hundreds of investigators associated with the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office and the press incompetent.”

Honeycutt says Edwards’ critics can’t have it both ways. “If he was that smart [to get away with crimes], then that means the rest of us were that stupid.”

Edwards’ real mistake, Honeycutt believes, was not corruption. “His problem was two things,” he says. “One, he was arrogant and, two, he had a propensity to bummery.” Asked to clarify, Honeycutt attributes the term to one of Edwards’ former associates and explains, “He kept bums around him and . . . these bums were trying to trade off his name.”

Most of all, Honeycutt laments what he believes was Edwards’ arrogance toward prosecutors, the press and even the public. “If he had chosen his words better, if he had chosen some of his friends better, I don’t believe he’d be in jail today,” Honeycutt says.

When the book is ultimately published—and that could be a year or more—Honeycutt knows that many will be interested in what, if any, scandalous information Edwards shares with readers.

For instance, what about Edwards’ notorious reputation as a womanizer? “I don’t want to write some salacious kiss-and-tell, especially since it doesn’t make any real difference in regard to how it affects the state,” Honeycutt responds. Moreover, Honeycutt doesn’t know how he could possibly write the intimate details of these alleged episodes without naming names. “And I don’t plan to be sued for the next 20 years,” he insists.

As for the allegations of Edwards’ infidelity, Honeycutt believes they are true. “Can I respect that? No,” he says. “But it existed and it will be woven into the story, but only in general terms.”

As he nears the end of the project—he’s still interviewing Edwards even as he whittles pages from the manuscript—what conclusions has he drawn about his friend’s legacy?

“My personal belief about Edwin Edwards is he has potential, even now,” Honeycutt argues. “I believe it’s in everyone’s best interest for us to remember all the good things he did accomplish—from a new constitution to bailing out the workers’ compensation program to saving Louisiana’s only hope for an NFL franchise.”

As for Edwards’ sins and crimes, Honeycutt is philosophical. “For the wrongs he may have committed, that will soon be between him and his maker—a date each of us will keep.”