Locked In with Ian Bick - Charged with Murder: The Insane & Mind-Blowing True Crime Story of Alvin Ridley | McCracken Poston

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

Alvin Ridley’s Criminal Defense Attorney takes you deep into one of the most bizarre and unbelievable cases in criminal history. Alvin Ridley, a reclusive man, was accused of a heinous crime that shook his small town to its core. This video unravels the twists and turns of Ridley's life, the shocking allegations against him, and the surprising outcome that left everyone stunned. Prepare yourself for a mind-bending journey through a story that proves truth is stranger than fiction. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with McCracken Poston: https://www.mccrackenpostonjr.com/ https://www.mccrackenposton.com/ https://www.facebook.com/McCrackenPostonJr/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the moments that matter, choose Kyrad Naturals. Infused with aloe vera and vitamin E, Kyrad natural's bandages protect your unexpected scrapes, cuts, and burns, while also moisturizing your skin. Find deeper relief with natural ingredients you can trust to start the healing. When life surprises call for the best, choose Kiraad, a deeper level of care. Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit kurad.com to learn more. Virginia Hickey was her maiden name.

She had had epilepsy since childhood. And her family was understandably doting on her and concerned about her because occasionally she would have really bad reactions to the medication. So she would either be hospitalized from, you know, grandma seizures or she would be hospitalized for what the medicine was doing to her. She would have a kind of a reaction to the medicine. So they were very pleased when probably the most normal thing happened was a young soldier from the neighboring county, Alvin Ridley, was courting her.

And they married in a little Baptist church in Ringgold, Georgia, three weeks after Dolly Parton and Carl Dean got married in Ringgold, Georgia. See, we were the marriage mill of the southeast because of its juncture with three other states and the marriage laws in Georgia, which provided for one-stop shopping, you got down there, you got your blood test and your marriage license, and you could have a ceremony, that became the place to run off to get married. So Dolly Parton, against her manager's wishes, she and her husband to this day. And her mother went down to Ringgold, Georgia, and she got married.

Three weeks later, Alvin and Virginia go and get their marriage license. And they go on to another Baptist church and have their marriage. By the time George Jones and Tammy Wynette came to Ringgold to get married in 1969, Virginia Ridley was missing. And her parents, I don't know if you can zoom, I'll give you this later for you to look at, but her parents put out an article, Parents Seek Married Daughter, and that was 1968. 1998, the tabloid National Examiner, has an article, Sick O' Hull's wife 30 years, captive, then kills her. and those are the bookends of the public awareness of Virginia Ridley. She was declared missing in 1968.

She was found dead in 1998. Now, when we heard that there was a dead woman at Alvin Ridley's house, Alvin was kind of the local oddball. He was a very good television repairman. in the age of cathode ray picture tubes. He seemed to just be a natural at it. It was a skill that he picked up in the Army. He eventually, after he married Virginia,

and after she disappeared, he opened a shop in downtown Ringgold, Georgia. And he fixed people's televisions and had a good run for a while. And then things started happening, and Alvin's reaction was so unusual to them. In 1981, his father driving a company truck had, by all appearances, a minor accident with a cement truck.

It damaged the back of the company truck, but his father survived it and even drove away from it. Well, his father died two years later of pancreatic cancer. in Alvin's mind, Alvin and his mother's mind, they thought that wreck had something to do with his death. And they thought the wreck was wrongfully reported. So they began to sue everybody. So here we are in the early 80s,

and everybody's getting sued for this car accident that seemed fairly simple. And at some point of one of the defendants kind of, kind of fought back. They counterclaimed because it was obviously a frivolous lawsuit. And in that counterclaim, they thought they had a judgment against Alvin and they had the sheriff execute against an asset. And it was a 1977 Chevy van, another company vehicle that Alvin had. That was the apex of insult to Alvin. He felt the... that now he was destroyed and he had to shut down the business.

Well, I kind of, while advising him and later representing him, he was insisting that I talk about all this ancient civil stuff. And I said, you know, Mr. Ridley, you're being accused of murdering your wife that nobody has seen in 30 years. We need to talk about that. And he'd say, no, we don't. because I didn't kill her. But they did take my van.

Well, as I got deeper into this rabbit hole, I realized that Alvin successfully challenged the taking of his van. Apparently, the counterclaimant did not have proper judgment yet. So he got it back three weeks later, but he still wouldn't accept it. and in his kind of Rube Goldberg causation diagram in his mind, he felt that if he touched it and accepted it, it would trigger a statute of limitations that was going to make him file something.

And so he didn't touch it. This month is 40 years that this van has been untouched and is sinking into the earth. And where is it kept right now? On his bizarre property with a number of other artifacts of the last half century. And so it was extremely difficult, and now I had an extremely difficult client. Well, they didn't charge him for eight months. So he first started stalking me on the street. And the moment I began to talk with him,

he wouldn't make an appointment. He would call me in the middle of the night because my dad gave him my home number and would be screaming at me from some payphone on some busy road I could hear. And so I finally reached a compromise with him that he didn't need to make an appointment. He could just drop in on me any time and I would take the time to meet with him. My practice was pretty dead anyway. I had been in politics for a decade in Georgia. I served in the Georgia House of Representatives.

And then I ran for the United States Congress in 1996. I was destroyed. I didn't even win. And I was used to winning my state house seat elections, 60, 70 percent of the vote. It was completely reversed in the U.S. congressional race. I didn't win one county. I didn't even win my own county.

What had happened was, It's Georgia that used to be every state office and almost all of the congressional districts were Democrat. It all switched. And I think I was the first Democrat since the Civil War to lose that congressional district. But now it's been deep red. My opponent had been elected twice as a Democrat but switched. and it's really amazing I wrote in my book that my race was a bellwether of sorts because once I got beat, I'd been a reformer at the state capital.

I had passed a lot of ethical reforms of state government, those kind of things. Once I got beat, everybody thought, okay, we're all switching now. So I kind of joked in the book that everybody wants change, but they're going to be surprised that the faces are. the same. And so that's just politics. Yeah. So I just was so frustrated though trying to help Alvin.

My dad liked him. And my dad encouraged me to help him. And so I just tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he wasn't helping. And so at some point

they did arrest Alvin. They indicted him by special presentment, and they went and scooped him up. And the minute I heard that he had been arrested by pre-arrangement, I went to the jail. Now, sometimes it takes months to get a bond in North Georgia. There are some, you know, lesser offenses that there's a scheduled bond. So all you have to do is be charged with it, and there's a schedule. Or, there's a schedule on the wall at the jail where they say, okay, that's automatic bond for that amount. But some of the bigger charges like murder, you have to see a superior court judge to get a bond. Well, by prearrangement, I went to see Alvin the day he was arrested.

He had only been there probably an hour or less. And I said, well, you know, I'll try to get you a bond sometimes. It's a process. and he said, well, I've got animals in the house. And I said, oh, man, the pressure. The pressure is on me now. So I said, why don't you just sign your keys out to me? And I'll feed your animals.

And he said, no. And that put even more pressure on me that these poor animals were going to die if I didn't get him out. And so, you know, I had a plan. I was going to get the, you know, the Humane Society involved if I had to. But it also motivated. me. And I got the judge and the DA on the phone that evening. And I joked. I remember joking. If he killed this woman, it took him 30 years to get around to it. I'm sure we'll get around to a trial before he kills again. And, you know, we're all very cordial and they agree on a

bond. And then they agreed that he could put one of his properties up for the bond. The only thing in his name was this dilapidated zenith shop in the middle of town. Had a freezer-sized hole in the roof. Just all the weather happened in the outside were happening inside. These old TV sets had the patina of complete, you know, mold and mildew on them. And even the watermark from a recent flood on them. So they were destroyed. So they were alleging that he hid the wife for 30 years.

and then killed her at the 30th year mark, and then they found the body miraculously? Well, no, he called. He called it in. Oh, he called. He called in a very flat effect vocal tone that his wife had stopped breathing. Well, he first tried to call a Chattanooga hospital

to come get his wife, and they said, that's not how it works. You have to call the local authorities. He did not want to do that, because he trusted nobody in that town. He drove right by a fire station with an ambulance sitting out in front of it and passed it in order to go to the series of pay phones to get one to work. And so he just was an odd guy.

He didn't trust anybody. But he did call 911 and had that very flat tone. Well, Virginia's had not seen her family in, as it turned out, years. And she, her dad had died. Her mom was in a care home. And this left it to her siblings to pick up the mantle of the old family allegations that this guy's keeping her from us.

He doesn't let her meet with us. And pair that with Alvin's general, what I call the death stare that he would give people. When you'd try to talk to him about something, he would just stare at you like, you know, it was pretty chilling. I had received it before in the past. There was an issue I had to deal with him as state representative.

This kind of homeless guy pitchhiked all the way of the Capitol to complain that Alvin Ridley was cashing his government check for him and taking 15%. So in the meantime, this guy gets lost at the Capitol. So I spent a whole night with five agencies looking. I was known as the young state rep that lost a constituent. So I found this guy. He was sleeping in the bushes near the Capitol and took him to breakfast and said,

John Howard, why did you come here? And he said, Alvin Ridley's taking 15% of my government check. And I said, just go to the bank and get a bank account. You can put $10 in the bank account, but they'll give you 100% of your government check. And he was like the happiest constituent I ever saw. You know, I had solved his problem. Wait, couldn't the family find where Alvin was living to check on his wife?

And they did over many years, tried to check on her. And so when I confronted Alvin about the John. Howard issue, he just stared a hole through me. But I just said, you know, don't cash me anymore Mr. Howard's checks. He's going to go to the bank now and he's just staring at me. I remembered in high school, I was on the yearbook staff and I was trying to sell ads. And I also tried to go buy his business just door to door. And I got that same stare. And of course, I was from Graesville five miles away. I didn't have all the biases that the Ringgoll folks did about Alvin because my dad liked him and my dad liked doing business with outsiders. That was just his signature

move. I would go with him to the most unusual places to do business. And Alvin was one of them. We bought our Zenith console TV sets from Alvin. And those. And those are, those days, a lot of young people don't understand this, but televisions were like furniture. They were in giant wooden, heavy cabinets that were, you know, like a piece of furniture. You had lamps and other things on top of it, and your kid was your remote control. And I, you know, would run up and quickly spin between the three Chattanooga stations, my sisters and I would. and we wore the tuner knob off of one. And it was a plastic knob on a metal crescent pen,

so it was easy to do. And I remember a Saturday at home watching live wrestling when I had this eerie feeling somebody else was in the room, and I turned around, and it's Alvin Ridley there with a new knob, but he's also watching wrestling. I only remembered that when during the representation, he told me that he had met Andre the Giant. and he told me exactly what Andre the Giant told him he had for breakfast.

Well, my mind raced back because at like age 12 or 13, he told me that same story. And I went to school telling everybody I know somebody who knows Andre the Giant. And I remembered it when he told me, you were the guy. You were the guy that came in and scared the hell out on me while I was watching wrestling and gave me a lecture on out and turn a TV knob. my mother had just waved him into the house from the garden and so uh that kind of made us a little closer for a minute when alvin realized oh yeah you're you're you're you're mac postin's kid so um i had a merciful nickname as a child my sisters looked at you know i have a bunch of sisters

I have five older sisters. Oh, wow. They looked at my mother and they said, you're kidding. You name this baby McCracken. So my dad went by Mack. They figured out the last syllable was Ken. They could call me Ken. Kin?

Yeah. I like Mac better. At least they didn't call me the middle syllable. You know, that's before the drug took that name. Ken, okay. Yeah. So that was my childhood nickname. It was always annoying because my name's not Ken, my name's not Kenneth, and so I would, you know, try to correct people over the years, but I couldn't spell my own name in third grade.

So, you know, I just, let's ride with Ken. But, and that's what Alvin called me still. And so because my dad liked him and because I really needed. a challenge, I undertook to represent him. I got him out in what I always told him when he would fuss at me that I wasn't doing anything about the case. I would say, I got you out in 24 hours. Nobody gets out 24 hours from that jail unless it's... How many discounts does USA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount.

How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed.

Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 30% your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. Prearranged. And even for a murder, like in today's world, you're more likely than not, you're knocking now on bond. Yeah.

You know, his response to me, to me, when I would say, I got you out in 24 hours, he would say 26 hours. I mean, it was just this eerie, like, wow, you kept up with that, you know? And so he tells me the story about how he, I apologize, I have an insulin pump. Oh, no, no worries. And I don't mind the world knowing about it. My insulin pump sometimes reminds me of things, and I'll deal with that later. So anyway, I would realize that Alvin, a lot of times his stories would involve.

numbers. I just thought it was odd. But I also thought this guy is very paranoid. This guy may be crazy, but he seems to really be grieving about his wife. All the tabloids and the local newspapers are talking about him being a stone-faced loner. And that's why nobody thought he had anybody living with him after his father died in 1982 and his mother died in 1994, 94, I'm sorry. And then Virginia died October 4, 1997. But when the coroner and everybody came in on her, they were all completely distracted by the notion of, we don't know who this person is. She didn't have any ID.

they actually reached out to her original family to come identify her because they didn't trust Alvin saying who she was. So they went and found, yes, sure enough, they did get married. Here's their marriage license. But the woman hasn't had a driver's license since she was like 16. And she never voted. And all the usual...

ephemera of a life, you know, she didn't have. So they suspected him and it was clear that they did. And I would try to tell him, you know, just don't talk to anybody. Just keep quiet. Well, I later learned that he would march in and, you know, sit down for long interviews with the detectives. And some of those they recorded. Some of those they didn't even tell him they were recording it. So, you know, we're really already hitting complete frustration.

But nothing was happening. So we just agreed, look, if something starts up again, come see me. You don't need an appointment. If I hear something happens to you, I'll come to you. And that's what happened in the end of, June and July of 98, suddenly he's arrested on a special presentment indictment. So I went and I got him out in 26 hours, according to Alvin. And then still I couldn't get him to sit down and talk about his wife.

He insisted that I study all this ancient litigation. He talked about an eviction. He talked about the van being taken. He talked about his business. Now, everybody knew in town that he would type up these missives on long paper and tape them on the inside of the glass of the shuttered zenith shop. And they would just be, you know, complete wild ramblings of who all at fault for him losing his business. I used to read them to see if I was on them once I got into government myself. And so Alvin was just, he was a malcontent.

And everybody was afraid of him. People would treat him like the boogeyman when they spoke of him to their children. And so I had gone through one divorce right after my congressional race. And I had remarried the next year. And so here I am with a new wife who's from the. area who's familiar with the scary, scariness of Alvin Ridley. And so she was very tolerant as I was kind of clinging to this guy as this is this is what I can occupy my mind with.

I don't, I'm not sure that this guy is guilty, but he deserves representation. And he seems to be truly hurt and grieving, but he really expresses it in odd ways. And, you know, sometimes his crying can just turn off like that. But he screams at me all the time that I'm not knocking his case out yet. And so at some point in my office, you know, he starts screaming about the van. And I'm thinking, the van? And I just say, oh, Lord, well, he goes silent. and I look at him and he's like his hands are clasped and his eyes are tightly shut.

He thinks I'm praying. But it shut him up. So I ran with it. And I started praying my legal advice to him. And sometimes it would be earnest angely type, you know, fire and brimstone. And just because he would respond to it and he would shut up. and he would listen to it. And so I started very quickly incorporating it into my prayers.

And Lord Alvin needs to let me in that house so I could take pictures and show that there have never been any locks on the windows or bars like the tabloids and all the other papers were saying. They were describing like a prison. And Alvin at the end of those prayers, he would say, I'll think about it. and, you know, but that's all I could get, but at least we weren't screaming at each other. So we go into almost the trial season now. He was indicted in August. Trials are in September. I got a wonderful gift from the DA, 45 new witnesses. Well, I'm sole practitioner. There's no way I can

adequately vet, you know, and investigate all those witnesses. So I go to the judge with a motion for continuance. Now, in all of Alvin's ancient litigation, he would file emotions. He called emotions, what we normally would call motions. So I'm looking at some of his old stuff that he filed, and it would be emotion for continuance. So Alvin would get on to me about, aren't you going to file an emotion? And I said, well, I'll file a motion, but, you know, I think I can get us one. and I did. The judge said he was not going to put it off six months. He was only going to put it off three months.

We were going to have a special term in January of 1999. I was relieved because I had nothing. And the guy still wouldn't let me in his house. So the first break in the case, because our defense all along was, well, she had epilepsy. And Alvin said she had a spell. And she had a spell that night in the middle of the night. And Alvin woke up and tended to her and she said, I'm fine. You know, love you, good night.

And when Alvin woke up that morning, she was sleeping on her face and she was dead or not breathing as far as he was concerned. Alvin described to me what he tried to do for her, and it was a pitifully inadequate attempt at CPR. He admitted to me he didn't know what CPR stood for, and he said, well, I tried breathing in her mouth once every 60 seconds. And I'm thinking that's, that didn't have to work. And so, but she was obviously dead. And I don't think his feeble attempts that next morning hurt anything.

I just think it just made his grief worse. So an amazing, tragic break happens. Because we were always thinking this is an epilepsy death. There are old forensic pathology books that are standards in the field. And there was a great lawyer down the road from us. His name was Bobby Lee Cook. And he was kind of the dean of criminal defense lawyers in the whole state of Georgia. And I knew him.

And I've known him since I was very young before I was a lawyer. And I went to see Bobby Lee. And I said, do you have any pathology books? He took me to this beautiful library, and he grabs like four books off his shelves. And you open them up and they're not your coffee table book because it's all dead people in various states of, you know, of dead. And but one of the things that I zeroed in was what the state of Georgia was focusing on, particular hemorrhages around Virginia's eyes and mouth, that they were. we're saying this is indicative of manual asphyxiation.

The very books, the standards of the industry, are saying, don't jump to the conclusion of manual asphyxiation when there is particular hemorrhages, when they are present. And so I couldn't understand the difference in, you know, these learned treatises and the state of Georgia's autopsy. On the autopsy was a report that the coroner gave the pathologist when the body came to Atlanta. And it said, this woman has been locked in a basement for 15 to 20 plus years. My theory was that this so biased the examiner against Alvin that he just assumed, well, anybody that would do that probably did kill her.

and so he found homicide. Well, there was a tragic just break, and that was the death of the Olympic track star Florence Griffith Joyner. Now, I didn't think anything of it but just sadness when she died. I had actually seen her at the Atlanta Olympics. She wasn't performing. And I later think it might have been for health reasons. But not a lot of people knew she had a seizure disorder.

And when she died, nobody said why. But she was always dogged by people that did not want to acknowledge her greatness. She was always dogged with performance-enhancing drug allegations. Well, the state of California, they were going to do a thorough autopsy on Florence Griffith, Joyner. And they did. and the strongest, the only drugs she had in her, or trace of drugs, was Benadryl and Tylenol within therapeutic levels. And so she's vindicated in death, but what I was shocked to hear was that she died of a seizure

disorder. And so I knew I had to have that autopsy. And, you know, lawyers have rules that we have to follow and we have. have to live by. And one rule is do not, you know, actively misrepresent yourself as being somebody that you're not. Well, I was very careful in the script that I followed. But I was on the phone. This, after my continuance, I literally heard this on CNN like at 2 o'clock in the morning.

I was cleaning up after a party. And I was on the phone with Orange County Medical Examiner Monday morning by the time it got morning in California. So it was Monday afternoon in Ringold, Georgia. But I said, you know, this is Poston from Catusa County, Georgia. Well, all of that's true. My name's Poston. I'm from Catusa County, Georgia. but as you and I know,

really the only people that say they're from a county is usually a cop. And I said, we've got a case here that's a lot like your track star, Ms. Griffith Joyner, we being me and Alvin. And I said, I wonder if we could take a look at that autopsy

because we've got a case just like that. They sent me her autopsy. and they were very similar. The places where the particular hemorrhages were on her were exactly the same places that they were on Virginia. She actually had more of them, and, you know, it was clear that she died of a seizure. I probably wouldn't have worked in today's age,

that little maneuver you just did, right? You know, I got it, And I managed to get every witness, state witness, to have to explain it. That's incredible. And so I got it in time to give to the state, and they gave it to their witnesses. And so they tried to build their case of why these were different autopsies. So I think it shook them. And quite frankly, I think we were right.

I think it was clear now to me that Virginia died of a seizure disorder. The problem is, where was Virginia all this time? And why didn't she ever talk to her family again? And that was the second big break. Thanksgiving Day, 1998. My new wife and I, we go to her family for a while, and we go to my family, my mother and father, in Graysville, Georgia. at the end of our stay

I could hear my mother and father in the kitchen and they came to me and they had a covered up plate, tinfoil covered plate and a brown paper bag and they said, we want you to take this to Alvin. Well, that's the last place, the guy that wouldn't let me in his house screamed at me and made all the time and made me try to

you know, study all this civil litigation that I couldn't get him to cooperate about the murder case. But my parents asked me to do it. So I took my wife home and went back to Alvin's. Oh, by the way, I got a phone installed in his house so that he wouldn't have to go out on the highway to call me. And I had an Atlanta-based cell number. So, you know, it was going to be long distance, so I might as well be paying it. So I show up with the phone guy thinking I'm going to get in his house with the phone guy. And Alvin decides on the spot when he sees me, I'm going to have the phone installed on the porch. Classic. You should have disguised yourself as the phone guy.

Yeah, classic Alvin. So I show up. I bang on the door. Alvin's been known to carry guns. So I bang on the door and I kind of turn aside. and get behind the wall a little bit. And he shows up at the door. I could hear a TV in the background.

And he looks at me and I said, Alvin, my parents sent you a turkey plate. Happy Thanksgiving. And he said, wait just a minute. I see him go inside. He shuts the door. I hear the TV go down. And then I hear him talking like he's talking to somebody.

Now, we flash back to when we got the state discovery. State discovery included a time when social services went into that home in 1993 under the guise of checking on his elderly mother. Alvin and his mother had a dispute going on with the state where they thought the state was nosing around trying to, you know, you know, tell that old lady she couldn't live there. And Alvin famously escaped across the state line with his mother and took her to the hospital in Chattanooga where they checked her out and said,

they told the Georgia authorities, they said, this lady is of sound mind. She just wants to be with her son. You know, y'all, we've checked her out, you know. So Alvin was very proud that he outsmarted social services. But in their report from when they did, go in the house, they noted there are two cats tied to the coffee table. That's 1993. Coroner's report October 4, 1997, where the coroner went in with first responders to get Virginia's

body, there are two cats tied to the coffee table. So I knew what was coming. The DA, we used to have this thing in Georgia called similar transactions evidence. And the DA, the DA, was going to allege cruelty to animals and tried to allege if he'll tie the cats up, he probably tied the wife up. And Alvin comes back to the door and he says, come on in. I don't have a camera. I don't have anything, but I'm not going to turn that invitation down. And I go into one of the most difficult places I've ever been in my life.

I'd recognize the deathbed once I come in. off the porch and it was a home where Alvin and Virginia were living with his parents. So the main living room was also a bedroom. It was probably the warmest room in the house as well because the stove was there. So I recognized the deathbed from the photos. But as my eyes adjusted in this very difficult to see room, I see that Alvin has plastered a whole wall with writings on PC. is a paper of different sizes. And as my eyes adjusted, I also see two cats tied to the coffee

table. And I said, Alvin, we talked about this. Why are these cats tied here? And he goes, only time when people are coming in the house. And you think about it every time there was noted that there were two cats tied to the coffee table. It was when people were coming in and out of a house and he said mama didn't want them having no babies that's why he told you to wait before yeah yeah who he was talking to he was gathering the cats but i said these cats we have to get these cats to a vet it's just without a doubt we have i'm anticipating what the d a is going to do we have to get these cats to the vet but that that's another chapter so um my eyes are adjusting and the first thing i see is a poem

and it's written in this very unique hand that the lower dissenders is a term that the handwriting analysts use, like the parts of the letters that drop below the line that we're all taught to write on, like the whys and some J's and they had a distinct flare to them every time. I said, Alvin, who wrote this? And I was hoping. And he said, well, Virginia did. And I said, good God, Alvin, this, I got to have this stuff. This is, she's, she's happy.

Here she is telling what she's making you for supper. Here she is reporting what you have told her is going on in town. Is there more of this? He said, yeah, and he took me in a room and it was just stacked to the ceiling in boxes. It was in pretty bad shape. Some of it was being made into mouse nests and rat nests. Some of it, it was all infiltrated with cockroaches and silverfish. But I spent the next four days, like eight-hour days over the Thanksgiving holidays

and some days that I took from work, to try to curate and calculate. categorize these writings. I estimate there were 15 to 20,000 individual pieces of paper and some ring spiral notebooks and five Bibles with the margins covered up with writing. And they described a fairly mundane existence, but she loved watching television. She wrote, she had correspondence. Here's a letter from a former United States Senator. Alvin of Virginia, as it turned out, they both, for every ounce of mistrust they had for the local government,

they had corresponding faith and trust in the federal government. And so they're constantly writing the feds. And here's a U.S. Senator's letter back to Virginia Ridley, not Alvin. One of the pieces of ancient litigation was an eviction. And Alvin told me they evicted us from public housing and her parents were behind it. Well, I kind of dove into it. I found the court file. And this was September 15, 1970.

So still 27 years before Virginia died. But basically they were having a jury trial for an eviction. Alvin had elevated it to a jury trial. And here's a jury list. And I know one of the jurors. And I represented her son. So I called Mary Hakes and I said, you won't remember this, but you were a juror in an eviction trial 27 years ago.

And she said, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the weirdest thing ever. This guy was representing himself. And he was trying to, you know, all this stuff. And suddenly the judge that said, Mr. Ridley, send for your wife. And Alvin's father goes to get Virginia. Interestingly, Virginia's parents are in the courtroom.

Now, what are the odds of that? That there's this classic eviction going on and her parents are there. It's two years after she disappeared. They're flushing her out. the court has Virginia come to court where she says I want to be with my husband this is where you know when two people marry they become one and I want to be with my husband so he takes her back into chambers with her parents and with Alvin's dad he won't let Alvin go back there and they emerged the court went ahead and ruled for the housing authority to

evict them, but Virginia went home with Alvin back to his parents' house. That was the last place she had ever been seen in public, September 15, 1970. So 27 years and a month later, she's dead. So I'm realizing that her parents did see her, and pretty much their efforts to flush her out kind of subsided after she, you know, faced them down and told them, this is where I want to be. Well, in her writings are all these references to how mad she is at her family for causing that eviction. And in the writings, there are references to all the moon landings, the things that were happening in our history over the last, you know, 40 or, it's at that point, 30 years, she was noting.

Here's a full cast of the Waltons. Now, this was before DVRs. So she had to watch that show every week and just copy down a name and who they played. And then, you know, wait for next week so that she could get the full cast. That's the, you know, there were no DVRs in those days. Maybe there were VHSs, I don't know. Because they did have VHS cassettes. I learned later.

She wrote about everything going on in town, and she never went out into town. But she wrote of her love for Alvin, and she wrote of Alvin's adventures and how everybody was being mean to Alvin. And I began to realize that she was the author of all the litigation, filing all the emotions that Alvin filed. because it didn't seem like Alvin to be that wordy. He just generally wasn't. So I think Virginia was filing all this stuff. The DA didn't seem to note during the trial that for most of these years, Alvin's mother and father were also in the house.

So were they all keeping Virginia captive or what? But I had to eliminate them all as a, the writers of those journals, those notes. Yeah, how did you compare her writing to prove it was her writing? We had one document, one known writing, and that was the application for a marriage license. America's first pledge was freedom.

Jeep still carries that fighting spirit. With the Jeep declaration of deals, we're pledging our allegiance to the American people with great deals on the luxurious Grand Cherokee, with available three-row seating premium craftsmanship and tech that turns every drive into an adventure. or Jeep Wrangler with legendary 4x4 capability and open-air freedom. Because freedom deserves the vehicle built to carry it.

Jeep, there's only one. Hurry into your local dealer for the Jeep declaration of deals. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV branch. Even the Jeep Grill or registered trademarks of XAUS LLC. If you're moving all your precious possessions, here's something no one tells you. It's not just packing boxes. It's figuring out what supplies you need. How to lift without hurting yourself.

How to protect what matters most. How to fit everything into a truck and how to get it there safely and on time. That's where United Van Lines comes in. With nearly a century of experience, United knows exactly what movers like you need, guidance, protection, and professionals who've done this thousands of times before.

From careful packing and secure loading to transportation and final delivery, United handles every step so you don't have to guess, stress, or figure it out alone. Your belongings are protected, your timeline is respected, and no deposit is required.

So instead of worrying about the details, you can focus on what comes next. A new place, new memories, and a fresh start. Your first big move doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Move with the people who know how to get you there. United Van Lines, America's number one mover. Get a free quote at United Van Lines.com. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel

is California's number one entertainment destination for the biggest shows this summer. Catch vocal powerhouse, Christina, Aguilera July 21st. Rock out to Imagine Dragons July 23rd and enjoy the signature G-Funk sounds of Snoop Dog July 24th. Tickets are on sale

now at yamava Theater.com. Only a Yamava resort and casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win. Must be 21 to enter. In 1966. That she signed. Luckily, her name Hickey had the same unique flare

dissender off the Y as it did with Ridley. and every other time she wrote the letter Y. And so it was fascinating. But I also had to get out known writings of many Ridley, Alvin's mother, and Bill Ridley, Alvin's father. And Alvin had to do an exemplar to show that he was not the source. And so we're heading towards trial, and now I have something to defend it.

him with, but I still couldn't explain it. So I found a wonderful epilepsy expert out of South Carolina. His name was Braxton Bryant-Wa-Macon. What a name. So you got the cracket and Wanamaker over with it. Yeah, Braxton Bryant-Wanamaker, Dr. MD. And I found him on all these, this was 1998 internet. Okay. It's the scratchy dial-up. I couldn't afford to get the full journal, medical journals. I was just looking at abstracts. And there's this thing called sudden death and epilepsy. And it seemed like the guy that knew more about it and wrote the most about it was Braxton Bryant-Waunt-Maker MD, who I found out was in Orangeburg, South Carolina. So I called him up. He was very hard to talk to. He was just a, you know, you can tell

he was an academic. And, you know, I said, look, I just really have this death with this patiquia. And he said, my patients come in with that all the time. Horrible patiquia. And they lived. And I'm saying, would you please be an expert witness for, and I'd sent her, him, her autopsy. I sent him Flojo's autopsy. And he agreed.

And, of course, it was going to cost me. but he agreed to come testify. And as we were rocketing toward the trial, Alvin was doing some bizarre things. I'm forced to try a case before his. I'm appointed on a case before his. But we're pulling out of the same jury pool. So I tell Alvin, I said, you know, first you have to come and answer up, because if that case falls apart, you know, we're next up.

But secondly, you need to sit there while we're picking this jury because it's the same crowd. The people that don't get picked for this jury are going to be the people we're picking from for your jury. And I just want you to, if you recognize him, did you sell them a TV? Did you have a bad business deal with them? I didn't have no bad business deals. Okay, Alvin, but, you know, you, you, you,

you think half the world's against you, you could just tell me if you think they're against you. So he decides he wants to bring himself to court that day. I usually had to go get him for court. And Alvin used to say, Constitution says I don't have to go to court when I'm sick. So I had to start carrying a paperback copy of the U.S. Constitution to challenge him whenever he said it. and so anyway he drives himself to court that day we answer up and then i said here's you a pad now i got to pick this jury you you write here's the jury list you write down the names about two hours into it the d a corners me during a break and says oh your friend has been

arrested down in rome georgia i go what friend he said alvin ridley i turned around looked in the room he's gone rome georgia is an hour away he gave the U.S. Marshals the bums rush at the federal courthouse where they thought he had doused himself with gasoline before doing it. And he ran into Judge Vining's office screaming that his lawyer in Ringgold hadn't done anything to knock out his case yet. He needed the federal court to intervene. I called down there and talked to the U.S. Marshals and they said, well, we recognize him from the news. I said, well, he's kind of a special guy, but I don't think he met any harm. And they said, yeah, he says that his car broke down on the way down, and that's why he smells of gasoline.

And I said, smelling of gasoline will be an improvement of how he usually smells, because the guy never bathed. As far as long as I knew him, he never bathed. How old is he at this time? 56. 56. Okay. And I convinced them to let him go. this was before 9-11.

After 9-11, they would have just shot him. The world changed. But he wouldn't even be able to get into a judge's chambers. Oh, the world changed after 9-11. But I'm waiting for Alvin when he slowly drives home. And I pounce on him. I said, what in the hell were you doing? And he's looking kind of awkward.

And he said, well, my legal advisor told me to try that. And I'm thinking I'm the only person he ever talks to in the whole town. He said, who are you talking about? Well, he mentioned the name, Salesman Sam. Salesman Sam was the nickname for a guy named Ben McGaha, and it was a derisive nickname because the guy rode around on a bicycle selling things out of catalogs in the basket. He's just one of these outlier figures in the community

who really was giving Alvin legal advice behind my back, and Alvin would follow his. It affected everything about the case. A lot of the documents I picked out to use, Alvin and Salesman Sam decided I didn't need so many documents. Virginia had a fan girl crush on actor, director, producer, Ron Howard. She wrote about him all the time. Alvin and Salesman Sam thought that that looked bad on Alvin that Virginia liked another man.

So they did not want me to use all that. And I'm saying, I got to have it because it shows that she's normal. She's a fan of somebody and she's keeping up with him and, you know, taking clippings about him and writing stuff she's seeing on TV about him. And in many ways, salesman Sam was truly. interfering with my representation. So, but I realized salesman Sam's also a witness now who claims he saw Virginia twice. One of Alvin's cousins was going to testify from Rome, Georgia, that Alvin brought Virginia to see them once.

So I needed salesman Sam, so I had to try to make up with him. So I ordered a bunch of crap from his catalogs, including some promotional. promotional pencils for my law practice and promotional pins that were dry as a bone the minute they got to me. Completely, I guess, old pins that he had suddenly rebranded with my name. And so it was just an ordeal. This literally sounds like a movie I've seen. I don't know which movie, but just everything. Everything's falling apart and going wrong until.

Dr. Wanamaker comes to town. And I put him up in a hotel. My wife and I were going to take him to dinner at this nicer restaurant. And it was so awkward because I felt like a child, and here's two children with this esteemed guy from Mount Olympus, and we don't understand him and he doesn't understand us. But it was just awkward trying to talk with him. and I gave him his check

and at the end of the conversations we had eaten and the place is about to close and he just said, is there anything else unusual about this woman? And I said, yes, she couldn't do anything without writing it down. And he said, that's hypergraphia. It sometimes is adjacent to temporal lobe epilepsy. He said, I've got clients that bring me their journals and they want me to read them.

And I don't want to read them. And I tell them I don't want to read them. But they think they're important because they documented everything of their life. That was the gift that literally I found out hours before putting him on the stand. And he's testified to what he was telling you. And now I could explain all these obsessive writings. And I just got that. It was almost like somebody was looking at.

it out for Alvin. And sure enough, I found out who later, because I had convinced Alvin, you know, Alvin, every time I've ever tried to talk to you about Virginia, you always circle around to the van and how everybody's ruined your business. And it's making you sound like that van was more important than Virginia. And he argued with me, no, she wasn't. But they killed her by taking that van and worrying her to death. thinking, oh no. The van was taken 15 years before she died, Alvin. Well, that worried us all.

It worried my daddy to death, worried my mama to death, and it worried Virginia to death. And Alvin would say that it worried him so much that he fell off the roof, and he would wear this ridiculous, soft neck brace every time we came to court. Well, first day of trial, I was. I don't know. I go to get him and the night before I was in his house and there was one room that he still wouldn't let me go into. And I thought I heard something in it. And I was so creeped out. And I was thinking, I got to see what's in that room because I'm hearing things now.

And, you know, in my mind's eye, I'm thinking, what if they had a kid? you know and and I just I finally I just put my shoulder to the door and open it up and there's this flurry of activity scared the hell out of me it's chickens and Alvin starts crying that it's so cold outside in this crappy little shed they had for the chickens that some of them died and so he brought them inside to save them and I realized this guy this guy can't kill anything. He grieves over a chicken. He grieved over a squirrel that got hit in front of his house, and he gave it a little burial and put a little cross on its grave. And I'm thinking this guy's like a child in a lot of ways, but he's very smart.

And so I show up the next morning, first day of trial. The door is unusually ajar. so he knew I was coming and he left it where I could come in and he's in the bed, covers all the way up to his chin and he's groaning. And I'm saying, Alvin, you know, we got less than an hour to get everything. And by the way, he didn't trust me with Virginia's writings.

The great compromise was I had to pay him to copy them so that I could share them with the DA, the curated list of things that he and salesman Sam said I could use. The rest of it he was going to hold in these two old suitcases that he dragged to court every day. The problem was he didn't want to come to trial. And he started quoting the Constitution. Constitution says, you don't go to trial if you're sick.

I had my paperback copy of the U.S. Constitution, threw it at him. And I said, find the article. I will file the motion. Well, you know, you knew he couldn't find it. So he said, okay, I'll come. Well, we're dragging these giant old suitcases. He gets in court and realizes he doesn't have his neck brace. And so he declares that the Constitution says he can leave and, you know, because he's not well,

I tell my secretary, Eddie Tess Medical Supplies, three doors down, go get him a new neck brace. And thank God it's a new one because the old one was like a, it was horrible. we called it the stench radiator. And so the jurors are walking in the courtroom to be picked. And the first thing they see is this lawyer putting on a soft neck brace on his client. I look like the biggest scam artist ever in the world trying to get sympathy for this guy. But it was the only way I could keep him in the courtroom. And interestingly enough, as the trial went on,

Alvin didn't wear the neck brace anymore. You think he got comfortable? It was the stress. And the state psychologist did say he was paranoid and he had this thing called somatization, somatization, where you imagine physical ailments and they very much appear real to them. Well, but I've seen Alibians,

Alvin run like a 40-yard dash when he needs to. And there was a newspaper reporter, kind of infamous cameraman who would chase people down and get in their face with a cameraman with his camera. And Alvin saw him coming around the courthouse one time and took off running. And so I knew when Alvin needed to, he could run. But the plan was that Alvin was not going to testify.

because I convinced him, I thought, that the jurors were going to not, it wouldn't sit well if all he could talk about was his van. And so we had hired another expert that Alvin wanted, and it was a forensic pathologist, and I just didn't vet them very well, and it just was a disaster. and I really just hired them because Alvin wanted somebody to, you know, come in his house and look at his non-crime scene that he set up for us. And so it just ended up being such a disaster. We went to lunch, Salesman Sam, Alvin, and this little group of church people that started coming to the trial, Alvin church hopped. And he would go to a church until they would ask him to quit asking.

for money and then he would change churches. Well, this was one now that he was kind of famous and he had a little family that was following him around and praying for him. Well, we're walking back to the courthouse and we're about to close our case. And Alvin said, I got to tell you something. I said, what? And he said, Jesus appeared to me during lunch and told me I had to testify. And, you know, that's the one thing that Alvin, that was his call. It was his. It was his. call whether to testify or not testify and a lawyer's strategy cannot trump that. And so I took him into, and by the way, we started off in one courtroom. If you watch this case on forensic files, the episode about it, you'll hear the jurors talking

about all the cockroaches coming out of those suitcases. It was like hordes of cockroaches. I don't know how he reloaded the suitcases every night with more cockroaches, only to get them all out. Or I don't know if they were going back in before he took them home at night, but he unleashed scores of cockroaches into this courtroom. Well, it was the one adjacent to the judge's office. and middle of the trial, the judge said, Mr. Poston, we are going to move this trial into the other courthouse because of your client.

I have to fumigate this courtroom and it's next to my office. It occurred to me as we were moving into that courtroom after lunch. This was the last place Virginia Ridley was ever seen in public, 27 years before September 15, 1970, the eviction trial. And now we're reuniting her writings with the last place she had ever been seen. It was eerie. It was eerie and it kind of gave me this boost because now I could point to places in the room and say she was right here. And she said she did not want to be with her family.

She was right here. Plus, now we had writings. where she described that she was mad at her family. And she also described sheriffs of the past that she had talked to, that her family had sent to check on her, and she would write it down in one of her books about talking to this sheriff, and that past sheriff's nephew was on our jury. And so I was really pushing those buttons to make sure we emphasize Sheriff Lee Roy Brown said she was okay.

You know, there's his nephew on the jury. And so it was just how it all came. When it comes to weight loss, you don't need more advice. You need more of what works. That's Weight Watchers. Design for one thing. Better weight loss results. with real coaches who show up week after week

and host workshops and Q&As on a schedule that works for you and real tools designed to take the guesswork out of what to eat, how to move, and how to build habits that actually last. Because real results don't just come from more advice. They come from the support to follow through. That's why Weight Watchers Core Plus members lose three and a half times more weight

than people who do it on their own. Get more of what works with Weight Watchers Core Plus. More tools. more support, more personalization, more of what actually works. Get started today at weight watchers.com. In a six-month clinical trial of over 370 people, those using Weight Watchers saw significantly better results than those following standard nutritional advice alone.

See the 2025 study published in the AJCN. Together was almost like somebody's looking after Alvin. They never offered him a plea deal at all? Oh. Do you think he would have taken it if they offered or he would have said no? Because it would have been your job. Alvin would have fought. Alvin fought everything.

Okay. So it wouldn't have made a difference. It wouldn't have made a difference. And the jury acquitted him. Alvin testified beautifully. He didn't make any mistakes. No lash out to nothing. He was, and he was, he went way beyond what I thought his abilities were.

But he really didn't have a filter. And I also realized. how literal Alvin is. And I had to really just mind myself to not ask him a question that isn't very literal. I made the mistake of saying, because he was doing so well, I got excited and I wanted to end on a strong note. And so I said, Alvin, tell the jury what you've lost. I was wanting him to say the love of my life, my only friend. But very literal Alvin says, oh, I guess the funeral bill, I could see the DA just quickly jotting that down.

I thought we're going to hear that one later. How do you do on Cross? Confounded the DA just as he had confounded me for 15 months. He completely confounded the DA. The DA would say the DA didn't seem to understand this is a man who, he's only in a different set of clothes because I told him he had to change clothes before trial. Otherwise, he'd have been in the same set of clothes that he'd been wearing for months that he slept in. And the DA couldn't seem to fathom that. He was saying, where did you get the, where did you get the quarter for the phone

call to the hospital? And Alvin would take the longest time and he would pull out the glasses out of his pocket and put them on and look all distinguished. And he'd look around the room and then he would say, I think it's 35 cents now. And the DA would like, well, where'd you get to 35 cents? Alvin would think a little while longer. And he'd say, well, it could have been in my left pocket, but I usually keep it in my right pocket. And so he was just getting nowhere.

And he would say, well, where did you get the money that morning to call out of my pocket? In other words, he sleeps in his clothes. And the DA just couldn't fathom that. And then they were making a big deal out of one side of the bed had an impression on it, where the side of the bed that was up against the wall did not. And so their theory was Virginia never slept there.

You moved her body there after she died. And now you were the only one that slept there. That's why your side of the bed is all worn down. Well, I pointed out that there is no sofa in that room when it became a bedroom slash living room. That bed became the sofa. So a bunch of butts sitting on that edge of the bed caused that depression because it's kind of used as a sofa. You know what else is interesting is that if he didn't get bail, you'd never, you probably wouldn't have been able to win the case because you got to learn him and go into his head. house.

Oh, over time. He trained me through fire. And like I said, the chapter about the cats is hilarious, but you'll have to read it. I don't want to give it all away. But where could people get the book? The book is everywhere. But it's the one with a kissing couple.

It's called Zenith Man, Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia courtroom. I wrote it all, but my publisher suggested the subtitle because there's another Zenith Man book online, but it's our story as well. See, New Line Cinema, Green lit this for a movie based on a screenplay by Mark Bailey in 2004. They never got around to doing it. but I gave him the title because he was the Zenith TV dealer, and that was the kindest of nicknames that he had. And I retained literary rights in that deal, and so I was planning on calling my book Zenith Man,

but there was enough out there in the Hollywood Reporter and stuff like that that all the podcasts we had done, the TV shows, Forensic Files, American Justice, some enterprising author took our story, changed their names, changed the location, and wrote a short book called Zenith Man. Where's Alvin now? Alvin passed away last week. Oh, wow. I was one of his only friends, my secretary and I, my secretary of the last 15 years.

But what's even more fascinating is what really motivated me to finally write the book, was three years ago a juror from the case who had become a nurse in Alaska. She reached out through a third party to ask me, don't you think Alvin may be autistic? Nobody was talking about adult autism in 1997. I immediately knew he was. Once she said it, I don't know why I didn't think of it. And with Alvin's permission, I took him to a.

Atlanta, he was tested, he's very much on the autism spectrum. It explained everything. It was the last piece of the puzzle. And I knew I could write the book now because there are five million plus undiagnosed neurodivergent souls out there in America who are having interactions with cops, with lawyers who don't understand them, and with judges who get pissed off if you don't look them in the eye. and it's affecting them at every step of the process. Misunderstanding by cops, bad lawyering, frustrated lawyers, and angry judges. And so that's my call to action for the book, is to we have to train for these.

And it's probably going to be a dwindling population because they catch it in schools now. They catch the fact that a kid is on the spectrum. And of course, 27 years ago, the spectrum concept had just been introduced. But there was a lot of energy going toward what's causing this and blaming things. And when in fact we've had neurodivergent souls since we've had mankind. And some of them have been huge contributors to our culture, to science, to the arts. And Alvin was a hell of a TV repairman. That was his laser-focused skill, but the technology changed.

That's what really happened in the mid-80s, that nobody got their TVs fixed anymore. They threw them away. And you guys stayed closed all of these years? Alvin, when I didn't know he was autistic, we both enjoyed the forensic files, the American justice, and all these shows. And Alvin was just an enigma to me. He was just really a fascinating character, but I still didn't know or think of autism. And there was a brief period that Alvin got a new girlfriend.

She dyed his hair jet black. And he told me that he kept away from me because she didn't like preachers or lawyers. So he saved me from getting whooped twice. And I think, okay, Alvin, so we're even now, right? You know, the way he's thinking like, okay, we're even. I saved you from getting whooped by my girlfriend. Well, that didn't last long.

And Alvin ran into my office one day. He had gotten caught up in a scam. And they had taken some money from him. And I took him over to the phone, telephone AT&T place. By now he had a flip phone. And I said, change his number. And I handed it back to him. And I said, there you go, Alvin.

He'd gotten on these date lines to try to find a new girlfriend. And they're full of scam. And a lot of them are out of Russia. And they get your number and then they, you know, try to manipulate you. And at the end of that, I said, Alvin, let's go to lunch because I'd love to catch up with you. It's been a while. And I need a flu shot. Why don't you go with me?

get a flu shot too. We went to a pharmacy. And I said, you know, we should do this more often. He was at my office the next week. And for 15 years, we've gone to lunch every week. That's awesome. About six weeks ago, he looked so bad. We took him, I got him involved in the Veterans Administration medicine because he had been a U.S. Army veteran for two years in the Army. Um, his, we had been watching his kidney function be of concern for years. And it just plummeted. So we're having a heat wave in Georgia and everywhere, apparently. And so I really encouraged him to stay at the hospital and then various step down programs

just to get us through this heat wave. And then they thought that some of it could be, uh, due to a blockage. So they were going to do something to, I guess, alleviate the prostate where it was causing, keeping him from being able to completely empty his bladder. And while we're waiting on that, he got sent to another hospital for that assessment.

He had a heart attack. And I get the call at 2 a.m. And, you know, Mr. Ridley's having a heart attack. I go and he's sitting up in the bed handing these cards out to nurses that he hadn't met yet. It's classic Alvin. He's very charming when he needed to be. And around women, he was the most charming. That's why I had a group of women from the office always sitting in the courtroom during breaks

because he would be deferential to them. He would be very sweet and polite. to them and would defer to them when they wanted to speak to him. So they kept him in the courtroom, kept him from leaving. And I talked to him just a little over a week ago. And I said, Alvin, do you think that's Virginia and your mama and daddy calling for you? And he said, no, they want me to stay with you. So, you know, I just thought, I went on the July 2nd.

I just, it's 4th of July week. I have a couple of jail cases to go see. And I thought, you know, they're not going anywhere. I'll go see Alvin. And I'm so glad I did because he was in the first, for the first time, he seemed to me in discomfort. And this was July the 2nd. I guess 11 days ago.

So after they got him kind of calmed down and had him on oxygen, and I said, I thought of a different approach because Alvin didn't want to talk about death. He told me he was going to live 110. And then he told me, well, it doesn't matter how long I live because before I get 110, Jesus is coming to get all of us. And I would just mess with him. I'd say, Alvin, you know, Jesus is going to have to kill you to take you with him. And that kind of confounded him for a minute.

like, oh, really? So I said, Alvin, I'm looking forward to meeting Virginia because I feel like I know her better than anybody alive but you. And I just am looking forward to meeting her. And he said, my daddy will take you and me fishing up there. He said, you can catch 30 fish an hour. A lot of Alvin's stories have numbers in them. I never understood that part.

it if that's part of the autism. But that was one of the last things he said to me. And I was with him by his side when he was obviously having, they could not address his heart issues without killing what was left of his kidneys. And when I explained that to him after the first heart attack, he said, well, let's just ride it out. I want to try to get my kidneys improved. and so Alvin did a will a couple of years ago leaving his entire estate,

which includes some property his parents had that are still in their names. We've got to go through this weird process of getting it into the estate's name. Every cent of it is going for a scholarship for autistic children. Wow. So Alvin's going to have quite a legacy. was excited about that, that his name could live on long beyond him. Did you tell him that you were going to go do a podcast about the story? I've been doing podcasts.

Oh, so he knows about it. He went with me to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library to launch the book. He stole the show. There were two chairs up there for me and a moderator, and I said, Alvin's coming. Put a third chair up there. Wow. So I let. and you can go online and see us at the Jimmy Carter Center.

That's there, Jimmy Carter, Presidential Library, YouTube channel, February the 20th of 2024. Everywhere he went, he stole the show, and it just was delightful. And so what was even more delightful was this community that used to be fearful of him. and he was the legendary boogeyman to children that didn't behave. They would, Alvin Ridley would come get you. He scared people because of his autistic mannerisms that were not understood, his flat vocal effect.

His very autistic mannerisms were actually used against him at trial. Doesn't sound like a guy that just lost his wife. Well, I'd seen him cry a lot. his emotions would eventually meet the moment, but it could be a couple of days later that it would hit him. And then they would, you know, come rushing out. It kind of reminds me of the Grinch story a little bit, how the Grinch was like an outcast and, you know, they all came to love him in the end. I never thought of that. But I got to live and thankfully he got to live to see the community completely.

do a 180 about him. And he became the most popular man in town. We had three big events close enough to where Ringgold people could come to, Catusa County people. They were flooded. They were packed, sold out of books all three. He sat there writing his name in the books. and I would be excited because I'd say,

Alvin, it's one of our jurors. He would look up. He'd look down and keep writing. And then after he was over with, he would say, it was really good to see them jurors. And I'd say, you didn't say anything to them, Alvin. You just looked at him. He goes, I looked at them.

They saw me. I nodded my head. You know, but that was just Alvin. That was his way. That is so awesome. Do you think about how different your life would be now if you never took that case? Oh, he gave me a second act.

After that case, my practice was very soon limited to just criminal defense. I've had some, an amazing last quarter of a century in my career. First 15 years, I was messing around in politics. I was prioritizing the public service if I were having to, and I was avoiding controversial cases. because I was worried about my politics. And it seemed like after I got beat, I was with a vengeance I was taking on the controversial cases. And I didn't like just the,

I got a sense of a piling on that was happening to Alvin. And probably because my dad, my dad liked him, that helped me a lot. Now, in something that I did not anticipate, I was trying to remember, as I was writing the book, a day that I took Alvin to my parents' house in Graisville because my parents had a calming effect on him. And so I mentioned it to my sisters. My parents have both been gone now for years. And she said, well, you know, I've got mama's journals.

Well, none of us ever want to read our mother's journals because she was wrong. all, and we were all, several of us going through multiple marriages and divorces, and we're a very loving family, but there was a lot of dysfunction. And I had completely repressed, and I pulled one year of our mother's journals out this year, the key year of 1997-98. And I realized that we were dealing with my father's alcoholism. at that time. We did an intervention, and I had completely repressed it. And I remembered then suddenly going and having to sit with my father in the hospital and sharing with him that I'm talking to

Alvin Ridley, by the way, because, you know, they're kind of suspecting him of this mysterious woman. And my dad said, you know, son, he's a good man. He's just different. He just thinks differently. and that stuck with me and that probably helped me stay with Alvin but you know what really kept me in the case? I'm sitting with Alvin in my office and we're

I think it may have been the same day that I started praying my advice to him because he was screaming at me before and my secretary comes in and says Congressman Deal called wants to talk with you well this is the guy that

just completely destroyed my race, you know, my effort to go to Congress. And, you know, I'm not saying he did anything wrong. It was just I was hurt by the enormity of my loss. And Alvin kind of straightened up like it was, oh, it was maybe about him. And I thought, you know, good grief. So I just thought, well, at least I'll impress Alvin. So I dialed up, you know, Washington and waiting on getting through the gatekeepers. And the congressman comes on and I'm glad I had it to my ear because I said, Congressman, you know, McCracken posting, how are you doing?

He said, well, I need you to keep Alvin Ridley away from my congressional offices. It was about Alvin. but not in the way Alvin thought it was supposed to be. So I just said, Congressman, I will pass that word along. Thank you for calling. I didn't like the tone. The guy was like adding insult to injury of,

I'm in Congress and you're not, and I'm ordering you to keep this guy away from my congressional offices. But he said he scares the ladies there, which I don't doubt. I don't doubt. But Alvin and Virginia, they thought the federal government was going to be their salvation. And Alvin was trying to petition his government. And so I thought, how am I going to handle this?

Because I already figured out about Alvin that if I tried to side with the government and say, you can't do this, or side with the congressman who is now taking away that. branch of government from his, you know, his go-to place, it would destroy him, I thought. So I took him outside and I said, Alvin, I want to talk to you about the congressman's call. And I said, you know that damn congressman, he hates me so bad. Alvin looked kind of puzzled and I said, you know, the election. Well, he looked even more puzzled because he knew I'd gotten a crap beat out of me. and I said,

Congressman hates me so much that he said, if you or me ever go to his office again, he's going to have us both arrested. And I said, Alvin, I can't afford to be arrested. So I said, if you will just cooperate with me and help me help you, when this is all over with, I'll take you and show you where he lives. That satisfied him.

That satisfied him. We had a plan. that, you know, one day I'll just let you go right up to his door and petition him. But right now, because of me, you shouldn't go there anymore. And I took a lot of pleasure out of that. But as I say in my acknowledgments in the book, Congressman Deal became Governor Deal for two terms. And he passed, he championed and got through the legislature. signed into law some of the best reentry legislation because all we were doing is just building

prisons and and then the recidivist rate was just huge and it was one of those only nixon could go to china situations only a republican could pull that off because if a democrat had even suggested it it would have been you know look at those you know convicted felon loving democrats again. So I acknowledge his great work in that in my acknowledgments. And I said for that reason, I never told Alvin where he lived. That is so awesome. Well, McCracken, thank you so much for sharing this incredible story and journey with us today. Thank you. I hope people will read it. It's on Kindle. It's on Nook. It's on Audible. It's not me.

I'm sad to say. A lot of place names are mispronounced, but it's a good read, and it's a great reader, a guy that I've recognized from commercials, actually. But it's in hard book form with this beautiful photo of Alvin and his fiance at the time at a photo booth at a little amusement park in our town called Lake Winnipesoca. and that strip of photos was among Alvin and Virginia's things, and my publisher loved that one, and I think it did make a great cover.

Wow, and we're also going to have the link to the books and the description of this episode for people to check out and purchase a copy. And feel free to edit anything you need to edit out. No, you slayed this interview. You are a podcast professional. This is so awesome and hopefully you continue to get invited on other shows. Thank you.

You did really amazing. Thank you.