The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom by McCracken Poston Jr.

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom by McCracken Poston Jr. https://amzn.to/49OrmAE Like a nonfiction John Grisham thriller with echoes of Rainman, Just Mercy, and a captivating smalltown Southern setting, this is the fascinating true story—sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking—of an idealistic young lawyer determined to free an innocent neurodivergent man accused of murdering the wife no one knew he had. An inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice for readers of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Just Mercy. Was this small-town TV repair man “a harmless eccentric or a bizarre killer” (Atlanta Journal Constitution). For the first time, Alvin Ridley’s own defense attorney reveals the inside story of his case and trial in an extraordinary tale of friendship and an idealistic young attorney’s quest to clear his client’s name—and, in the process, rebuild his own life. In October 1997, the town of Ringgold in northwest Georgia was shaken by reports of a murder in its midst. A dead woman was found in Alvin Ridley’s house—and even more shockingly, she was the wife no one knew he had. McCracken Poston had been a state representative before he lost his bid for U.S. Congress and returned to his law career. Alvin Ridley was a local character who once sold and serviced Zenith televisions. Though reclusive and an outsider, the “Zenith Man,” as Poston knew him, hardly seemed capable of murder. Alvin was a difficult client, storing evidence in a cockroach-infested suitcase, unwilling to reveal key facts to his defender. Gradually, Poston pieced together the full story behind Virginia and Alvin’s curious marriage and her cause of death—which was completely overlooked by law enforcement. Calling on medical experts, testimony from Alvin himself, and a wealth of surprising evidence gleaned from Alvin’s junk-strewn house, Poston presented a groundbreaking defense that allowed Alvin to return to his peculiar lifestyle, a free man. Years after his trial, Alvin was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a revelation that sheds light on much of his lifelong personal battle—and shows how easily those who don’t fit societal norms can be castigated and misunderstood. Part true crime, part courtroom drama, and full of local color, Zenith Man is also the moving story of an unexpected friendship between two very different men that changed—and perhaps saved—the lives of both. About the author McCracken King Poston, Jr. was born and raised in Catoosa County in Northwest Georgia. A four-term member of the Georgia House of Representatives, his world unraveled after a number of personal and professional setbacks, including a losing bid for the U.S. Congress. Soon, Poston found himself representing a most unusual client - a man once revered as a natural TV repairman who had also suffered several downfalls, including being accused of holding his wife captive in their basement for almost three decades before killing her. Poston went on to complete the representation of Alvin "Zenith Man" Ridley, and the community was shocked to hear the truth of what went on at the dilapidated house in Ringgold, Georgia. Only recently, Alvin Ridley was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which explains much about how throughout his life he was misunderstood by his community. Poston's first book is a story of redemption, of more than one man in Catoosa County, Georgia. Poston went on from this case to a distinguished career as a criminal defense lawyer, with cases featured on television's "Forensic Files," A&E's "American Justice," and several national publications. He and his secretary continue to help Mr. Ridley, now eighty-one, making and getting him to appointments, and helping him navigate a neurotypical world.

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Voss. She jumped in on me. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. And now you do it, young lady. I don't think it's going to happen. There you go. Too many buttons to push all at once.

Welcome to the show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. That'll go on the blooper reel for future shows. As always, we have the most amazing guests on the show. So the amazing stories, the great authors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the astronauts, the CEOs, the billionaires, all the people who bring their stories of life and journeys, share them on you to entertain you and also improve the quality of your

life. In the meantime, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Get them in on the action. As our current guest was talking to me before the show in the green room, he goes, you're a very busy man. And we put out two to three shows a weekday, sometimes four, and 10 to 15 plus shows a week.

If you can't find something to entertain you on this damn show, man, I don't know what to tell you. You're not listening, right? Maybe check your earplugs for weevils or something. Do weevils go into earplugs? I don't know. We'll have a legal check on that. Anyway, goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas, linkedin.com, Fortress Christmas, Christmas 1, and tickety-tockety for the christmas over there zenith man death love and redemption in a georgia courtroom came out february 20th 2024 is the new book and we're going to be talking with the author today about it

mccracken poston jr is going to be with us on the show and we're going to be talking about his amazing book and this story that seems like it might be fiction, but as they always say, truth is stranger than fiction. So we'll get into this nuance of the book. McCracken Poston Jr. is a criminal defense attorney and former state legislator in the Georgia House of Representatives. He gained national attention for his handling of several notable cases that were featured on CNN Presents, Dateline NBC, A&E's American Justice and Forensic Files, He Lives in Georgia.

Welcome to the show, Mr. McCracken. Mr. Poston, how are you? Thank you. I have to go to two different places at Will Call to look for my tickets all the time. Do you really? They get those mixed up? They do. You know what I keep thinking of is that dude with the driver's license's license do you know the movie mclovin mclovin yeah

mccracken mclovin there you go so give us your dot coms where do you want people to find you on the interwebs mostly at mccracken poston jr.com is the my book site. On Twitter, it's at Real Zenith Man. There you go. And then Facebook and the other things, it's McCracken Poston Jr. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of this book and what's inside of it. It's a true story that I think is a cautionary tale about a rush to judgment in a small town. And it's a lot has to do with the time period.

In 1999, when this trial happened, there was very little known about adult autism. I only learned three years ago that my client in the case is indeed autistic. Oh, wow. And that explained so much about the case, about the reason he seemed suspicious. But his very autistic mannerisms were actually used against him at trial. His flat effect on the 911 call is, by his people observing him, a mismatch between the moment and his emotions about the moment. There you go. And then he kept grudges from childhood as if they just happened that week.

He was an extremely difficult client that I had to fight with that. But then every now and then some really something like a divine intervention would happen. He was obsessed with ancient civil litigation. And I would say, we need to talk about this murder case. And he would say, no, we don't because I didn't kill her, but the County did take my van. And so that was his logic that I had to fight all the time. I mean, it must've been a nice van. So how did you get involved in this case? I mean, I think you've alluded that you were the attorney on the case. How did you get involved in this case? It's a small town and the difference in small Southern towns, especially is we know all

our eccentrics. We pretty much know them all what we didn't know was that there was a woman in alvin's house who never came out in almost three decades and that was his wife wow they married in 1966 just three weeks in the same place got their license in the same place that Dolly Parton and Carl Dean got their marriage license in Ringgold, Georgia in 1966. By the time George Jones and Tammy Wynette renewed their vows in Ringgold, Georgia in 1969, Virginia Ridley had disappeared. Her family pushed every way. They put articles in the local newspaper, in the Chattanooga, Tennessee newspaper about their missing married daughter. Ultimately

they were factors behind an eviction which ended up in a jury trial. And on September 15, 1970, Virginia Ridley made her last public appearance in the Catoosa County courtroom, basically saying, I'm with my husband. That's where I want to be. Wow. Her family, her parents kind and I think understandably, revived all of the rumor mills about they thought that Alvin Ridley had kept his wife from being seen by anyone.

Ah, so some control there maybe. So it basically turns out, how did they find that she's passed away in his house? He told her that he told the 911 operator what he called it was she's epileptic. And of course, that meant she had epilepsy. Yeah. And she did from childhood. She had stopped taking her medicine 20 years before. So she was not medicating, making her vulnerable to that. There was a question at first of why wasn't she taking her medicine? Why didn't she go to the doctor? Why didn't she

do all of these things? And these were questions that I was concerned with. And as it turned out, Alvin was so difficult, he would not let me have access to his house or his shuttered Zenith television business that had been shuttered for 15 years. He let the police go in both buildings anytime they wanted to and multiple times, but he would not let his lawyer. And so there was just an issue that I had to figure out how to work with him. And it was the divine intervention again of my parents sending a turkey plate on Thanksgiving and telling me they wanted me to take it to Alvin Ridley. When I showed up with the turkey plate, I realized that he's so transactional that he felt like he needed to give me something. So he invited me into his home. Wow. And so this was Thanksgiving of 1998.

And he's free on bail at this time. Is that correct? Oh, yes. He when when I remind him that I got him out of jail within 24 hours, he corrects me 26 hours. Well, very demanding client. So when I get access to this house on Thanksgiving, I'm not really prepared. I didn't expect him to invite me in, but I took advantage of the opportunity. And as I adjusted my eyes, it's a very uncomfortable house to be in. My eyes started focusing on one wall.

And just about every way you could attach paper to a wall, there was a wall covered with writings, different types of paper. And as I focused in on it, I said, Alvin, who wrote this? It seemed to be all in the same very unique hand. He said, Virginia did. Well, it was poetry. It was reports of things going on in the community. It was the cast of the CBS show, The Waltons. It was just all types of just random stream of thought, things that she wrote down that I got too excited, perhaps, because this was the mystery woman, and I wanted to use this stuff. And Alvin said, it's all I have left of her. You can't use it. Wow, man.

So ultimately, I had to pay him $200 to borrow it to make copies for the prosecutor with the understanding that we would discuss actually using it later. Yeah, and you're his attorney trying to say. Now, how does it end up that they think there's foul play involved and they put him up, I assume, for murder? The state of Georgia pathology report, first the body was delivered to the state crime lab by a local coroner who passed along the local rumor that was unsubstantiated. She said to the state medical

examiner, this woman has been locked in a basement for 30 years. And I'm thinking that that influenced his decision. He looked at the petechial hemorrhages around the eyes and the lips of the deceased and indicated he thinks that maybe she was strangled or smothered. That could be from an epileptic seizure attack. Exactly. Alvin maintained that she had a seizure in the night and that he found her face down. And if you're having a seizure and you are face down in the bed, that is one way you can suffocate yourself. At the same time, Alvin was difficult.

And what I needed was an example of an epilepsy death. And thankfully, we don't have as many epilepsy deaths as we used to because of good medication. But just interestingly enough and tragically, in September before the January trial, the Olympic track star Florence Griffith Joyner passed away. And by October, it came out in the news that she died of a seizure disorder. So I got her autopsy to compare it to Virginia Ridley's autopsy. Now, the most famous athlete in the world dying. And it was a very exacting autopsy because there was always people that did not want to acknowledge this athlete's sheer greatness, always tried to suggest that there were performance enhancing drugs.

The only thing in Flojo was Benadryl and a therapeutic level of Benadryl. And yet the condition of her body was very relevant because that was a first-class autopsy. The most famous person in the world. I was comparing it to arguably the least known woman in the world and her autopsy. And the bodies looked alike. The bodies looked the same in terms of petechial hemorrhages, tardo spots, etc. There you go. This is wild.

This guy is fighting his attorney he's charging you for stuff you've got a you know barter with him to try and save him from the you know potentially death row it was it it was not a death sentence but but any sentence would have been a life sentence for him and it was extremely difficult as it turned out only three years ago. And this is what finally made formed the book in my head that I learned that my client, Alvin, is autistic. There are five and a half million adults with autism that are undiagnosed. And I guarantee any interaction, official interaction that they're having with an investigation or perhaps with a judge, they are not going to be, they're not going to satisfy their inquisitor. They're going to take literally every question and they're not going to be able to respond to a question that isn't literal. And we speak in riddles sometimes.

And so I like to think of it this way, that Alvin was having difficulty processing me, the investigators, everyone, but we also were having issues in processing him and the way he communicated. And so it was really just like turning on the light in a room to realize that Alvin is autistic. It explained his flat effect on the 911 call, which was used against him at trial. Because he was very calm and non-emotional. It explained the lack of expected emotion to the moment,

which, you know, Alvin absorbs the emotion in a room, and he did when my parents died. And then there'll be a release. There'll be a meltdown at some point. But it's very much goes with autism. And, and I hope

that my book helps perhaps cause police officers to be trained better to screen for that or, or state psychologists or judges. Yeah. I, I might, I have friends that have autistic kids. They respond differently. They close themselves off. If they get too much stimuli, they, you know, they, they're, it varies on the spectrum,

but you know, the responses can be just logical with no emotion or vice versa. I mean, it just depends. And yeah, I could, I could see how there could be people probably on prison or death row that got there because,

you know, as you said, it's the, it's, you know, not only are we having a hard time understanding, they're having a hard time understanding us and everything's lost in the middle and, and giving them the presumption of suspicion rather than innocence can just make things look awful. So yeah, it makes me wonder how many people might be in jail over this. Another interesting fact is I brought in the world's biggest expert on sudden death and epilepsy, Dr. Braxton Bryant Wanamaker of Orangeburg, South Carolina, where just as an aside, after taking him to dinner the night before I put him on the stand, as an aside, he said,

is there anything else unusual about this woman? And I said, I mean, I found what I estimate to be 15,000 entries in this loose leaf journal that went over 30 years. And I said, yeah, she wrote down everything. And he calmly said, that's hypergraphia. That happens in some of my patients, usually temporal lobe epilepsy. And he said, it doesn't affect what she writes. It just tells her to write it down and it compels her to write it down. And so that was fascinating because she dated some of the writings. Some could be dated by

what she talked about. The first moon landing, the second moon landing, the president's. She wrote President Richard M. Nixon about the couple being evicted from public housing. He responded through the HUD secretary who referenced her letter to Richard Nixon. She wrote congressmen and senators. They had a for every ounce of suspicion they had about local government, and they had pounds of suspicion about local government. There was a counterweight of hope from the federal government. It was very unusual.

Huh. And so there were just two eclectic individuals. She may have been on the spectrum. I don't know. But they're just two eclectic individuals who like their privacy they don't like the world messing with them you know i like i said i have lots of autistic friends they like to do their own thing because you know they see us as the abnormal ones absolutely like you guys are the ones who who have problems we're fine we understand what we're doing and I feel equally responsible for the communication problems.

Yeah. And even at trial, and by the way, I did not plan on putting Alvin on the stand because I thought, how bad would it be that I'm asking him about his wife and he wants to talk about this van that was taken in 1984. And so. It's a nice van though. I decided I'm not going to put him up.

And ultimately, Jesus appeared to him during lunch one day, and he came and told me, he said, Jesus told me you got to put me up. And so who am I going to argue with that? So I tried to prepare him. And by the way, he insisted on keeping the evidence in these giant old suitcases. Along with the way, he insisted on keeping the evidence in these giant old suitcases. Along with the evidence, he brought scores of cockroaches into the courtroom.

Oh, gee. It infested the courtroom. One of the people on forensic files, the jurors, mentions this scene. And the judge finally said, you know, Mr. Poston, we're finishing this trial in the other courthouse in the old courtroom that was the last place virginia was seen 27 years before and it was eerie going back into the courtroom the last place she had ever been seen in public and here are her writings man this is a this has got to go on Dateline and 48 Hours, all the shows, right? I mean, this just sounds like a hell of a show.

But it was very frustrating. Yeah. I did not know at the time what was making Alvin tick and what was making him so antagonistic toward me. Yeah. You're the guy who's fighting for his freedom. And now I realize some of it was my attitude and my frustration with him and how he was reacting to it. Maybe you should host things for attorneys on how to identify in law enforcement, how to identify people on the spectrum and how they maybe don't do the thing. But this definitely sounds like a great story

in in all the animals and stuff does he end up if you want to tease down what happens in the book i mean it's technically a real story so i don't mind because there's plenty of story in there but alvin was acquitted there you go and and and i was so thrilled because by the time the trial was ending, I was realizing that he is indeed innocent and in fact, innocent. And it just made me kind of shudder to think of all the people who have not. Now, I think as time goes on, that number of undiagnosed people is going to dwindle because we're catching autism in schools now. Yeah. And either they're being diagnosed in schools or parents are referred for a diagnosis somewhere.

And we've had autistic people in our, since humanity began and they've been some of our greatest contributors to science and art. And Alvin was a hell of a TV repairman, but that was been the of a TV repairman. But that has been the picture tube era. The solid state circuitry came along about the time that his business failed. TVs were no longer giant pieces of beautiful wooden furniture.

You had to get a repairman to come to you to fix. Now, as he laments, you just throw them away. Alvin will be 82 in a week. Wow. And we go to lunch twice a week, religiously on Mondays and Thursdays. Trust me, he's very exact. Let you know if you're late by a little bit.

Absolutely. And I feel very fortunate to have him as my friend. There you go. Working on Xena TVs that echoes was the movie Sling Blade. One of my favorite movies. Such great acting. Yeah. Carl.

Yep. Carl. Yeah. He's very, no gas in it. He's very Carl like, Oh really? Oh,

there you go. Uh, they, the, the, on the website, on the Amazon billing, they, they bill it as a nonfiction-like John Grisham thriller.

But that goes to Rain Man, Just Mercy, and Captivating Small Town, Southern Settling. Let me just tell you, don't go to John Grisham for a blurb. His agent told me off saying, don't send stuff to us because people will then accuse us for taking their ideas and i kind of got it after he told me yeah but at the same time i'm thinking you know ease up buddy yeah just call your this is this is non-fiction it actually happened i didn't just spring from my mind he writes so many books i can see that vcs have to do the same thing in silicon valley they won't sign an nd because, because they get so many different variations of an idea, but yeah.

The reason I wanted Grisham was that like me, he grew up in the South. Like me, he worked on a road crew when he was a teenager in the County. Like me, he went to serve in the state legislature and like me, his first book was nonfiction. Oh, there you go.

So this is interesting. And the man survives. The man lives a unique life. Him and his wife, you know, they don't go out and hang out with other people. I mean, you know, this was in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I don't want to hang out with people now. I don't like going out in public. Virginia was very much plugged into popular culture

as evidenced by her writings. And there was a couple of very critical pieces of evidence that I wasn't sure Alvin was going to bring or allow me to use. And one, I called it the Rosetta Stone because in it, she described the trouble she was having with her family, the fact that she never liked to go out, and the fact that she spoke to our sheriff. And she mentioned the sheriff that was our sheriff in the 70s.

And so that covered a period of time that you know we know she wasn't being held captive in the basement there you go man does she have a sister i mean a woman who doesn't want to go out all the time spend money i mean that's it sounds like a gold mine right there for me you know i mean of course i don't know nowadays they sit home and play and and bringing everything on amazon so they were They were the perfect couple. Yeah. It sounds like they were a perfect couple. They had a nice life.

And by the way, she wrote in a Bible, September of 1977, God told me today to stop taking my medicine. In this wonderland of a house are a bunch of empty medicine bottles that we used at trial oh wow suddenly in september of 1977 for several months they are filled medicine bottles so alvin was still trying to give her and go out and get her the medicine but oh he's trying to get her to take him and she's like she refused to take i had a girlfriend like that she had she had cushing's disease which is cancer in the pituitary gland. She didn't want to take her medicine. And it's like you're a much better person when you take it, but that's another story.

So what does he think about this? You go have lunch with him twice a week. What's his thoughts on the success of this book and the story? And does he want to see it maybe on film or tv or does he care by alvin's manner of speech you feel like you're going back to your childhood but just the things that he says and the phrasings that he uses it's it's very it's to me it's like visiting my childhood again and i remembered a moment from my childhood where i had an encounter with Alvin. I wore the tuner knob off of our TV when I was a kid. My sisters and I did.

And my father sends him to the house with a new one. My mother waved him on in the house. I'm about 13. I'm watching live wrestling. And all of a sudden, there's this strange man in my living room holding the TV tuner knob. And he gives me about a 20-minute instruction on how to change channels on a TV set. But I remembered it because he noticed I was watching live wrestling. And he told me about meeting Andre the Giant. And he told me what Andre the Giant had for breakfast, as told to him by Andre the Giant,

which was outrageous, the number of eggs and loaves of bread. And I remember going and telling all my friends at school that I knew somebody who knew Andre the Giant, and here's what he ate for breakfast. During the representation for the murder trial, he tells me the same story. And I said, you're the guy. You're the guy that told me this when I was 13 because I became the guy that related to Ringgold Junior High. There you go. What a thing in a small Georgia town.

It sounds like a very serious version of what was the one with the jersey and the little guy, the mafia guy from, whatchamacallit, they go to some southern town. Cousin Vinny. My cousin Vinny. It's like a serious version of my cousin Vinny. Maybe it's an inverse my cousin Vinny. Yeah, there you go. This has been fun to have you on. Give us your dot coms, your final thoughts as people go out, tell them where to buy the book, etc, etc. The book is on all platforms. It may be in bookstores as well, but it's on all platforms for ordering. It is the Zenith man with the kissing couple on the cover. That's Alvin and Virginia in an amusement park photo booth in 1965.

Wow. And so they used to get out. And it's to distinguish it from any other zenith man that's out there including one that is our story that someone put out as fiction tv repairman with a wife nobody's seen in three decades so it's kind of frustrating but i this is the title that i gave new line cinema when they were considering a movie about it 20 years ago. And I retained literary rights. And, you know, there is no copyright in title.

So I will credit that author with making me get off my butt to finally write this story. The truth comes out. This is making a great movie, man. This is making a great movie. And, or, geez, Amazon. And. This is going to make a great movie. He's Amazon. There's so many places that make great movies. Maybe you can get Billy Bob Thornton to play. He did really great in... What was it?

Goliath on Amazon? Have you ever saw that? No, I haven't. He's such a great actor. Yeah, in Sling Blade, he was just iconic. There you go. I guess I'll have some fries with that. Yeah. There you go. Thank you very much for coming

to the show. We certainly appreciate it, sir. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Order of the Book where refined books are sold and check out the amazing stories. Say you were able to read it first before they go muck it up on TV or movies or whatever. They always

do something with books that take them off course. Zenith Man, Death, Love, and Redemption in Georgia Courtroom. Out February 20th, 2024. Thanks for watching this video. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, chrisfast1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfastfacebook.com. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time. And that should have it.