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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening, According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, was this
Speaker 6: small town TV repairman a harmless, eccentric or a bizarre killer?
Speaker 6: For the first time, Alvin Ridley's own defense attorney reveals
Speaker 6: the inside story of his case and try in an
Speaker 6: extraordinary tale of friendship and an idealistic young attorney's quest
Speaker 6: to clear his client's name and in the process, rebuild
Speaker 6: his own life. In October nineteen ninety seven, the town
Speaker 6: of Ringgold And northwest Georgia was shaken by reports of
Speaker 6: a murder.
Speaker 4: In its midst.
Speaker 6: A dead woman was found in Alvin Ridley's house, and
Speaker 6: even more shockingly, she was the wife no one knew
Speaker 6: he had. Mccrack and Postin had been a state representative
Speaker 6: before he lost his bid for US Congress and returned
Speaker 6: to his law career. Alvin Ridley was a local character
Speaker 6: who once sold and serviced Zenith Television's. Though reclusive and
Speaker 6: an outsider, the Zenith Man, as postinnew him, hardly seemed
Speaker 6: capable of murder. Alvin was a difficult client, starring evidence
Speaker 6: in a cockroach infested suitcase, unwilling to reveal key facts
Speaker 6: to his defender, Gradually post and pieced together the full
Speaker 6: story behind Virginia and Alvin's curious marriage and her cause
Speaker 6: of death, which was completely overlooked by law enforcement. Calling
Speaker 6: on medical experts, testimony from Alvin himself, and a wealth
Speaker 6: of surprising evidence gleaned from Alvin's junk strewn house, Postin
Speaker 6: presented a groundbreaking defense that allowed Alvin to return to
Speaker 6: his peculiar lifestyle a free man. Years after his trial,
Speaker 6: Alvin was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a revelation that
Speaker 6: sheds light on much of his lifelong personal battle and
Speaker 6: shows how easily those who don't fit societal norms can
Speaker 6: be castigated and misunderstood. Part true crime, part courtroom drama,
Speaker 6: and full of local color, zenith Man is also the
Speaker 6: moving story of an unexpected friendship between two very different
Speaker 6: men that changed and perhaps saved the lives of both.
Speaker 6: The book that we're featuring this evening is zenith Man, Death,
Speaker 6: Love and Redemption in a Georgia courtroom With my special guest,
Speaker 6: attorney and author McCracken, Postin junior. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 6: and thank you very much for this interview. McCracken postin Junior.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad to be here with you.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this fascinating book.
Speaker 6: Zenith Mann, thank you.
Speaker 4: It was a labor of love. Took me over two
Speaker 4: decades to form the book in my head to finally
Speaker 4: write it. A lot of your listeners are going to
Speaker 4: be familiar with the case because it has been over
Speaker 4: the years featured and re ran on Forensic Files. The
Speaker 4: episode is called Calligraphy of the kind of a play
Speaker 4: on the word kill and the word calligraphy, right, and
Speaker 4: then on A and E's American Justice, an episode called
Speaker 4: Death in a Small Town, on NPR Snap Judgment, an
Speaker 4: episode called the Writing on the Wall.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about October fourth, nineteen ninety five Heaven
Speaker 6: right away, just in the prologue. And so you say
Speaker 6: that people are familiar with this story, and you write
Speaker 6: that they are familiar with a portion of a nine
Speaker 6: to one one call which brings everybody the attention of
Speaker 6: this international attention to this story. So you say that
Speaker 6: he Alvin Ridley lived in his late parents' house on
Speaker 6: Inmond Street. He was a failed television repairman and the
Speaker 6: town boogieman. He left his house and drove past the
Speaker 6: local fire department staff with ambulance and EMTs and drove
Speaker 6: looking for a workable payphone. Speculation as he called a
Speaker 6: funeral home to retrieve a dead body. But he did call.
Speaker 6: It was confirmed Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee. But he
Speaker 6: is instructed that it is a matter for the Catusa
Speaker 6: County authorities, And so reluctantly you write. He calls nine
Speaker 6: one one and the Catusa County nine one one office
Speaker 6: is right across the street and says something to the
Speaker 6: effect his wife breathing, and he says, I don't think so.
Speaker 6: So tell us about this nine to one one call
Speaker 6: and what the public hears, and a little bit about
Speaker 6: your background and how you came to be involved in
Speaker 6: this extraordinary case.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Dan First Ringold, Georgia is a relatively small town.
Speaker 4: It has around five thousand citizens in it. Catoosa County
Speaker 4: has in the sixty thousand in number. We are a
Speaker 4: part of metropolitan area of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We are on
Speaker 4: the Georgia, Tennessee border on the Georgia side it's a
Speaker 4: very historic area from the American Civil War. The Battle
Speaker 4: of Chickamauga happened on the west side of the county.
Speaker 4: Ringgold was named for Mexican American war hero that, as
Speaker 4: far as I know, never set foot here. He happened
Speaker 4: to die at a time and the penny press had
Speaker 4: been developed, and so he was kind of a mass
Speaker 4: media hero with a heroic death at a battle of
Speaker 4: Palo Alto, and so Ringold. Really, over the years, and
Speaker 4: definitely since the Civil War, it kind of took a
Speaker 4: very small town approach. It didn't grow much more. We're
Speaker 4: mainly known for the place that Dolly Parton and Carl
Speaker 4: Dean got married in nineteen sixty six, and three weeks
Speaker 4: later Alvin Ridley and young Virginia Hickey got their marriage license.
Speaker 4: Now this was in nineteen sixty six. In nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 4: I was a somewhat down on my luck, defeated congressional candidate,
Speaker 4: found myself back home with little prospects of any political
Speaker 4: appointment or electoral chances. I was trying to put my
Speaker 4: life back together, and I have a moribund law practice,
Speaker 4: and suddenly this thing happened on October fourth, of nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety seven. That kind of sent shockwaves through the small
Speaker 4: town one. Everybody knew who Alvin Ridley was. He was
Speaker 4: a malcontent. I think it would be a not too
Speaker 4: much of a stretch to call him that. He was
Speaker 4: constantly suing local officials. He posted missives on the inside
Speaker 4: of his shuttered and padlocked Zenith TV dealership that was
Speaker 4: falling apart, had a giant hole in the roof. His
Speaker 4: life just seemed to have fallen apart in the early eighties,
Speaker 4: and he had a lot of people he was blaming
Speaker 4: for that, and he would post these diatribes on the
Speaker 4: inside of the glass so you couldn't move them, but
Speaker 4: you would often name people who he thought were responsible
Speaker 4: for his ills. So when he called the nine to
Speaker 4: one one call on the morning of October four, nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety seven, which was a Saturday, everyone noticed a very
Speaker 4: flat effect of his voice. He just sounded, as matter
Speaker 4: of fact, my wife's not breathing, and there was just
Speaker 4: not a lot of emotion in his voice. And even
Speaker 4: though at the end of the paul he said please
Speaker 4: hurry again in a somewhat non excited voice. The nine
Speaker 4: one one tape was went around the world as here's
Speaker 4: a guy calling in for nine to one one who
Speaker 4: does not sound very excited, and who is this woman?
Speaker 4: Nobody in town, or at least not a lot of
Speaker 4: people in town, knew that she even existed, much less
Speaker 4: the fact that she had been his wife for thirty
Speaker 4: two years. So Virginia's family, or what was left of them,
Speaker 4: were siblings. Her mother at the time was in a
Speaker 4: rest home. They picked up the mantle that Virginia's parents
Speaker 4: had started back in the late nineteen sixties of saying, well,
Speaker 4: she's been kept against her will, and that evolved into
Speaker 4: being kept in the basement against her will for thirty years.
Speaker 4: So you can imagine how that went over with the
Speaker 4: investigating authorities, and so they began to ask a lot
Speaker 4: more probing questions to Alvin Ridley.
Speaker 6: And you write about your interactions with this gentleman and
Speaker 6: the interactions with your father, and your father had known
Speaker 6: Alvin as well, and the family. Tell us just a
Speaker 6: little bit about your background with Alvin.
Speaker 4: Well, Alvin had gone to high school with my oldest sister.
Speaker 4: I was born the beginning of their senior year, so
Speaker 4: I had no real direct memory of him, but I
Speaker 4: knew that he had a TV shop in Ringold My
Speaker 4: father traded with him, and father was the kind of
Speaker 4: guy who always tried to get the best deals and
Speaker 4: a lot of times would interact with people who were
Speaker 4: not in the highest echelons of society. Was just the
Speaker 4: way my father was. He was a very kind and
Speaker 4: understanding man. However, he had a drinking problem, and it
Speaker 4: wasn't your stereotypical Southern drunken wife beater. He was very kind,
Speaker 4: sad man who had a serious alcohol problem, but he
Speaker 4: was very high functioning. He worked in a foundry in
Speaker 4: Chattanooga and raised six children, allowing my mother to stay
Speaker 4: at home and have a garden, and you know, raised
Speaker 4: us all very well, except for the fact of, you know,
Speaker 4: having an alcoholic parent. My first early memory of Alvin,
Speaker 4: and I was only reminded of this during the representation,
Speaker 4: but I was about thirteen or so and was watching
Speaker 4: live wrestling on television. I had long worn off the
Speaker 4: tuner knob and we were using a pair of pliers
Speaker 4: to turn the channels between the three channels out of Chattanooga,
Speaker 4: and suddenly this strange man is in my living room.
Speaker 4: My mother had just waved him in and he has
Speaker 4: got a new knob for our TV. But he takes
Speaker 4: the opportunity to give me a lecture of how to
Speaker 4: turn the channels on a TV. And I only remembered
Speaker 4: it because he noted that I was watching wrestling, and
Speaker 4: he mentioned that he had in Chattanooga at the venue
Speaker 4: where the wrestling happened up there, that he had met
Speaker 4: Andrea the Giant. I remember telling my friends at school,
Speaker 4: I met this strange guy who says he met Andrea
Speaker 4: the Giant. And Andrea the Giant allegedly told him what
Speaker 4: he had for breakfast every morning, which was like a
Speaker 4: dozen eggs, or a couple of dozen eggs, you know,
Speaker 4: a couple of loaves of bread or something like that.
Speaker 4: I remember telling that story, like I've met somebody who
Speaker 4: met Andrea the Giant. I didn't think of it again
Speaker 4: until I'm having a conversation now with a man I'm
Speaker 4: advising who is about to be charged with murder and
Speaker 4: about to be accused of holding his wife a captive
Speaker 4: for thirty years in the basement, and he mentions that
Speaker 4: he has met Andrea the Giant and what Andrea the
Speaker 4: Giant had for breakfast? And I thought, you're that guy.
Speaker 4: You're that guy that I talked to when I was thirteen,
Speaker 4: and you told me that because I went and told
Speaker 4: it at school. And so it was interesting because early
Speaker 4: on our conversations were not that pleasant. Early on, Alvin
Speaker 4: was extremely difficult. He would call me at night, yelling
Speaker 4: at me, insisting that I am using air quotes here
Speaker 4: knock his case out because it was, in his opinion,
Speaker 4: a wrongfully brought case, and that he really wanted me
Speaker 4: to look into ancient civil litigation that dealt with his
Speaker 4: father's car wreck, the counterclaim judgment against him that caused
Speaker 4: the county to seize a van that he owned, and
Speaker 4: all of these things that I almost I had to
Speaker 4: promise to look into them just to get him to
Speaker 4: cooperate with me on the murder case. He would say,
Speaker 4: for example, I would say, Alvan, we can't talk about
Speaker 4: your van, this is a murder case, and he would say, well,
Speaker 4: yes we can, because I didn't kill her, but they
Speaker 4: did take my van. Yeah. So he was hell bent
Speaker 4: on kneecapping any real effort to represent him on what
Speaker 4: became a murder case.
Speaker 6: You say too. He was in a pitiful state, with
Speaker 6: the sagging, filthy clothes and dis horrible hygiene.
Speaker 4: He seemed to have a mental state that he relished
Speaker 4: in needing the sympathy and sometimes financial help of others.
Speaker 4: He went to a number of churches where he would
Speaker 4: make his plea and many of them helped him, and
Speaker 4: many of them then wrote letters saying, Hey, don't come
Speaker 4: back here asking for any more money for your mother's roof.
Speaker 4: We've given you plenty to fix it. So there was
Speaker 4: something going on with him, because I think he was
Speaker 4: very sincere, but he could come off as a con
Speaker 4: man if you weren't, if you didn't look at him
Speaker 4: deeply enough.
Speaker 6: You write about June twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 6: you're talking to a friend in law enforcement and he
Speaker 6: breaks the news about Alvin Ridley being arrested.
Speaker 4: It was actually a tire dealer that was excited about
Speaker 4: the fact that Alvin had just been arrested on in
Speaker 4: his parking lot, pulled over and arrested there when the
Speaker 4: young officer, Johnny Gass, recognized him what had happened. And
Speaker 4: in most cases there's a suspect, there's an arrest, and
Speaker 4: then the news springs from there. In this case was
Speaker 4: not like that. Alvin was a suspect, but not directly one,
Speaker 4: or it didn't seem to be direct because there was
Speaker 4: no more questioning of him within a week of his
Speaker 4: wife's death. But there was a kind of a drawn
Speaker 4: out process with Virginia's autopsy, and then there was a
Speaker 4: special presentment to the grand jury which none of us
Speaker 4: knew about. And then once the grand jury true build
Speaker 4: an indictment, then Alvin was a wanted man. He and
Speaker 4: I had talked for weeks and finally it just come
Speaker 4: to the conclusion of there may not be any charges brought,
Speaker 4: so let's just have this understanding that let me know
Speaker 4: if they bring charges or I'll be monitoring. If I
Speaker 4: ever hear you're arrested, I'll come to you. And of
Speaker 4: course when I heard it that day, I went. I
Speaker 4: did go to him at the county jail.
Speaker 6: You also write that National Inquirer has headlines and you
Speaker 6: included sickle Hold's wife hostage for thirty years, then kills her.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think it was the National Examiner, which is
Speaker 4: the same ilk of tabloid. And of course that just
Speaker 4: spread like wildfire throughout the world. Before you knew it.
Speaker 4: We had German film crews in town everybody titillated by
Speaker 4: the notion that a woman was held against her will
Speaker 4: in a basement for decades, three decades and then and
Speaker 4: then was killed. Early on from the first nine one
Speaker 4: one call, Alvin informed the authorities that his wife had epilepsy.
Speaker 4: He maintained throughout all of the questioning that she had
Speaker 4: had what he called a spell. By that he meant
Speaker 4: a seizure. She had from childhood severe epilepsy sometime well.
Speaker 4: The authorities had were under the assumption that she was
Speaker 4: not given medication, and thanks to Alvin being a pack
Speaker 4: rat and never throwing anything away, we were able to
Speaker 4: dispel that.
Speaker 6: You include that in this sensational coverage in the press.
Speaker 6: They also said that the examination the investigation may include
Speaker 6: the exhumation of Alvin's mother, many Ridley, So just adding
Speaker 6: to more controversy and speculation about the horrors that went
Speaker 6: on behind these closed doors.
Speaker 4: Alvin had gotten into it with Social Services, and this
Speaker 4: was at the height of he and his mother's litigation
Speaker 4: over his father's car accident, and they kind of caused
Speaker 4: it themselves. Alvin's mother wrote to Social Services declaring that
Speaker 4: her husband had died and that they're having trouble maintaining
Speaker 4: their lawsuit, and that her husband promised her of refrireador
Speaker 4: and two new dresses, and she really is in a
Speaker 4: bad way. Well, when a state agency gets something like that,
Speaker 4: they want to investigate. So innocently enough they start wanting
Speaker 4: to investigate. But Alvin and his mother really took that
Speaker 4: as a government intrusion on their privacy. And there was
Speaker 4: a race to Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga across jurisdictional state
Speaker 4: line where his mother ended up, and his mother told
Speaker 4: the doctors they need to leave us alone. I want
Speaker 4: to be with my son. And of course nobody was
Speaker 4: mentioning Virginia, and in the back of every agency's mind
Speaker 4: when they went to the Ridley house over the years,
Speaker 4: a lot of times it was just an effort to
Speaker 4: flush out Virginia, and because she had been missing since
Speaker 4: the nineteen sixty eight, so there was a lot of
Speaker 4: years and years and years of speculation about where is she,
Speaker 4: what is she doing, and why isn't she talking to
Speaker 4: her family. So ultimately, you know, Alvin and his mother
Speaker 4: kind of got the better of the state officials and
Speaker 4: they just kind of shrugged their shoulders and resigned from
Speaker 4: trying to find his mother now and I'm talking about
Speaker 4: his mother, Minie Ridley. So when Virginia died, it kind
Speaker 4: of stirred up those memories from just four years before
Speaker 4: of them trying to gain access to his mother. But
Speaker 4: his mother was quite complicit in evading the Georgia authorities,
Speaker 4: as evidence by her statements to the doctors in Chattanooga.
Speaker 6: You write about the difficulty in dealing with Alvin, but
Speaker 6: one of the main things that you had issue with
Speaker 6: is that you wanted to get inside the house and
Speaker 6: examine things that he has allowed the authorities to do previous.
Speaker 6: Tell us about your frustration in this regard.
Speaker 4: It could not be explained. From the day I got
Speaker 4: him out of jail and he told me his story
Speaker 4: that his wife just didn't want to get out. I
Speaker 4: told him, I said, I need to photograph this house.
Speaker 4: And you have to understand this house has probably never
Speaker 4: been painted since the late nineteen forties when it was
Speaker 4: built by his father, and it looks it but at
Speaker 4: the same time, that means there's nothing covered up. There's
Speaker 4: no bars on the windows, there's no hadlock latches or
Speaker 4: any evidence of someone being held captive there. And I
Speaker 4: wanted to capture that, sure, and I wanted to capture
Speaker 4: photos inside the house, you know, showing Virginia's things and
Speaker 4: things like that. He just simply would not let me.
Speaker 4: He would say, I'll think about it, and this went
Speaker 4: on for over a year. Meanwhile, I reminded him that
Speaker 4: he let every law enforcement officer that ever asked him
Speaker 4: for access, he let them in. So from starting to
Speaker 4: advise him on October verse six, nineteen ninety seven, until
Speaker 4: November of nineteen ninety eight, I was denied access to
Speaker 4: this house. At some point, I even purchased and installed
Speaker 4: a telephone for his house because since I had been
Speaker 4: in the state legislature, my cell phone has been Atlanta based,
Speaker 4: and I wanted him to be able to call me
Speaker 4: and not have to go out to a phone booth
Speaker 4: on some noisy road to call me, where he inevitably
Speaker 4: ended up being frustrated and yelling at me. So I
Speaker 4: was purchasing a phone for his house. Now I went
Speaker 4: there with the phone installer and my camera, excited about
Speaker 4: getting in to his home, and Alvin realized that and decided,
Speaker 4: oh no, we're just going to put the phone on
Speaker 4: the porch. So he had the phone installed on the
Speaker 4: porch and thwarting me again. So in November of nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety eight, on Thanksgiving Day, my new bride and I
Speaker 4: went to visit her family in one part of the county,
Speaker 4: and then we visited my family in Graysville in the
Speaker 4: northern part of the county, and on the way out,
Speaker 4: my parents handed me a lake of food covered up
Speaker 4: in foyle and several little margarine tubs full of other
Speaker 4: parts of the meal, and they said, my father said,
Speaker 4: I want you to take this to Alvin Ridley. He
Speaker 4: doesn't have anyone and that is the last place I
Speaker 4: wanted to be on Thanksgiving. The trial had been put
Speaker 4: off the month before, and I was so thankful of that.
Speaker 4: But there was starting to be some evidence that was
Speaker 4: coming our way, I thought. For one, the autopsy of
Speaker 4: Virginia Ridley revealed that she was covered in these tiny
Speaker 4: ruptured blood vessels called petite or particular hemorrhages, and the
Speaker 4: State of Georgia was saying, that's indicative of asphyxiation death.
Speaker 4: And so we had a great dean of our defense
Speaker 4: bar in close to my community, a man named Bobby
Speaker 4: Lee Cook, who, if you'll do some research you'll learn
Speaker 4: that the Matlock character was based on him. Well, he
Speaker 4: was just down the road and he had known me
Speaker 4: since before I was a lawyer. And I went to
Speaker 4: him because he has this beautiful library, and I said,
Speaker 4: you know, I've got this case. I really want to
Speaker 4: see some books, some pathology books, because I've got this
Speaker 4: thing about particular hemorrhages and I want to see them.
Speaker 4: And he gives me like four forensic pathology books and
Speaker 4: I said, well, please let me copy these, and he
Speaker 4: said no, no, no, just keep them. Just keep them
Speaker 4: as long as you need them. And I began to
Speaker 4: realize in my research that particular hemorrhaging was quite common
Speaker 4: even among the living of people after having a seizure
Speaker 4: or having a coughing fit, or in cases of asphyxiation
Speaker 4: as well, but it did happen in non manual strangulation
Speaker 4: or manual smothering deaths as well, and so I was
Speaker 4: very excited about that. But there was no real other
Speaker 4: than in these books. I really wanted another death that
Speaker 4: was clearly a seizured related death, and amazingly and sadly
Speaker 4: and tragically one kind of landed in our Lapse. In
Speaker 4: September of nineteen ninety eight, the just heralded Olympic star
Speaker 4: Florence Griffith Joyner passed away unexpectedly. She was known as
Speaker 4: Flow Joe. She was the greatest female athlete of all time.
Speaker 4: But I didn't think anything of it until October, about
Speaker 4: the third week of October, when on the news one
Speaker 4: night I heard that her autopsy had been released and
Speaker 4: that they determined she died of a seizure disorder. So
Speaker 4: I was on the phone with Orange County, California Medical
Speaker 4: Examiner the next business day right and talked to the
Speaker 4: doctor that actually autopsied Florence Griffith Joiner and convinced them
Speaker 4: to share that autopsy with me. And what was fascinating
Speaker 4: was the similarities. But I knew that flo Jo the
Speaker 4: definitely the greatest female athlete in the world and one
Speaker 4: of the most known people in the world, that her
Speaker 4: autopsy was going to be first class, and I wanted
Speaker 4: to compare it to perhaps the least known woman in
Speaker 4: the world, Virginia Ridley. So that was encouraging. So I
Speaker 4: had that going on in October, and we needed an
Speaker 4: epilepsy expert to describe that, yes, people do and can
Speaker 4: die of epilepsy, and then also to explain these particular
Speaker 4: hemorrhages and how they very often happened to people after seizures.
Speaker 4: So that was all I had. But in November I
Speaker 4: show up with the turkey plate. On late Thanksgiving Day,
Speaker 4: I had taken my then wife home and came back
Speaker 4: and I didn't call Alvin. I just went. And one
Speaker 4: thing I was beginning to realize about Alvin was he
Speaker 4: was very transactional, and had I known that all along,
Speaker 4: it would have been a much easier representation. But I didn't.
Speaker 4: I was figuring it out and I knocked on the
Speaker 4: door and he comes to the door and I said, Alvin,
Speaker 4: my parents wanted you to have Thanksgiving meal, and he
Speaker 4: said just a minute. He closes the door, and I
Speaker 4: think I hear him talking to somebody inside, and the
Speaker 4: TV is rightrunning and everything goes quiet, and he opens
Speaker 4: the door and he says, come in. Well. It was
Speaker 4: a fascinating and yet uncomfortable place ter just in terms
Speaker 4: of the lack of good ventilation, and of course it
Speaker 4: was late fall, and it was sealed up pretty tight
Speaker 4: and had some warming attempts to insulate windows with the blankets,
Speaker 4: you know, tacked over them. There was a single red
Speaker 4: Christmas light bulb illuminating this main room of the house,
Speaker 4: and I recognized from the photos there's the bed, the
Speaker 4: death bed of Virginia Ridley. It was in the corner
Speaker 4: of against the wall, immediately on the left when I
Speaker 4: walked in. But he pulled a string and there was
Speaker 4: a bigger light bulb, a regular white light bulb. And
Speaker 4: you know, as I was talking to him, I noticed
Speaker 4: I didn't have a camera, and I was not prepared,
Speaker 4: but I noticed a whole wall of paper that was tacked, taped, nailed,
Speaker 4: wedged in, pandling, just any way you could attach a
Speaker 4: piece of paper to a wall. That they just about
Speaker 4: every way they were attached. And I was having difficulty
Speaker 4: reading them because it was very dark in the house,
Speaker 4: and with this light on my head was making a
Speaker 4: giant shadow on them. So I was trying to get
Speaker 4: up and get kind of sideways and look where I
Speaker 4: could read them. And they appeared to be all written
Speaker 4: in the same hand, and it was a very distinctive
Speaker 4: handwriting the lower reaches of letters that had the lower stems,
Speaker 4: and it had a real flourish on it. And you know,
Speaker 4: I said, there's a recipe, here's a poem, here's some
Speaker 4: discussion about events. And I said, Alvin, I knew it
Speaker 4: was not his handwriting because I had seen that scribble.
Speaker 4: So I just said, Alvin, what is who wrote this?
Speaker 4: And he said, well, Virginia did well. I got so excited,
Speaker 4: probably too excited for his liking, and that I said, Alvin,
Speaker 4: I got to have this. This is the everyday mundane record.
Speaker 4: Many of these things are of this woman that no
Speaker 4: one has seen in thirty years, and this is I
Speaker 4: need this. And he said, well, you can't have it.
Speaker 4: It's all I've got left of her. And so we
Speaker 4: were back to this real stalemate that he and I
Speaker 4: almost constantly maintained about the things that I wanted him
Speaker 4: to do. And so Alvin professed and seemed to be
Speaker 4: a very religious person. I found out fairly early in
Speaker 4: the representation accidentally that I could stop his crying if
Speaker 4: he thought I was praying right. And when I say crying,
Speaker 4: I mean his rage or he's yelling at me, or
Speaker 4: his complaints about me. That if I just began a prayer,
Speaker 4: he would get very reverent, he would listen to the prayer.
Speaker 4: And I began to basically give my advice in prayer
Speaker 4: form to him. Oh Lord, please explain to Alvin why
Speaker 4: I need to get in his house. Please explain to
Speaker 4: Alvin why he needs to help me talk about his wife.
Speaker 4: And there'll be another day to talk about them taking
Speaker 4: his van, you know, those kind of things. But it
Speaker 4: was a way to control him, and it was a
Speaker 4: way that he was too polite, too religious to fight it.
Speaker 4: It was helpful. So I went right into a prayer
Speaker 4: right in that room, and you know, said, Dear Lord,
Speaker 4: you have given me all this evidence. And I said,
Speaker 4: is there more? And Alvin goes yeah. In there, and
Speaker 4: in this other room it's just boxing boxing box of
Speaker 4: her correspondence and her journal, her loose leaf diary. I later,
Speaker 4: after going through it all and pulling what I thought
Speaker 4: would be helpful to him, I estimated there were probably
Speaker 4: fifteen thousand plus entries, and much of it was dated,
Speaker 4: and I tried to pull all of that, and then
Speaker 4: some of it was dated by what it was talking
Speaker 4: about the moon Landings elections. Alvin and Virginia had early
Speaker 4: on been evicted from public housing. In fact, that was
Speaker 4: the last place she had ever been seen in public
Speaker 4: was at that trial of their eviction, and she only
Speaker 4: showed up because the judge ordered her there and went
Speaker 4: back into chambers with her parents, and later emerged and
Speaker 4: she went home with Alvin and her parents went home.
Speaker 4: So she obviously convinced the judge that she was where
Speaker 4: she wanted to be. And that was September fifteenth, nineteen seventy,
Speaker 4: the last time Virginia Ridley had ever been seen. So
Speaker 4: twenty seven years later, she's dead and I'm trying to
Speaker 4: put together this defense, and I have suddenly found all
Speaker 4: these writings that indicate that she seen to be a
Speaker 4: happy person. She was very She was watching a lot
Speaker 4: of TV. She noted different programs that she liked. She
Speaker 4: seemed to like the real wholesome stuff, like the Waltons,
Speaker 4: which was a CBS show that was all family oriented.
Speaker 4: She was absolutely obsessed with TV's Ron Howard, who was
Speaker 4: on the Andy Griffith Show as Opie, who was on
Speaker 4: Happy Days as Richie, and who later became quite a
Speaker 4: prolific writer and director and producer. And she was obsessed
Speaker 4: with him, but in a kind of a wholesome way.
Speaker 4: She took out clippings about him from newspapers and she
Speaker 4: wrote on the edge Ron Howard and his wife Cheryl,
Speaker 4: and I actually introduced that one to show the jury
Speaker 4: that this woman was even plugged into popular culture. And
Speaker 4: she wrote President Nixon, and that was evidenced by the
Speaker 4: person from the HUD the Housing an urban development agency
Speaker 4: who wrote her back referencing her letter to President Richard M. Nixon.
Speaker 4: So she wrote Congressman Senators Alvin and Virginia had for
Speaker 4: every ounce of suspicion they had about local government, there
Speaker 4: was a pound of hope in federal government and federal agencies.
Speaker 4: And that later revealed itself with some of Alvin's behaviors
Speaker 4: as I've tried to represent him.
Speaker 6: Let Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
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Speaker 6: Now we have to get to this indictment and this trial,
Speaker 6: and first what is Alvin charged with? And then can
Speaker 6: you layout as you do this person that you knew previously?
Speaker 6: This attorney named nicknamed Buzz tell us about what how
Speaker 6: he lays out the case for the prosecution.
Speaker 4: Well, with all the rumors, I was expecting a false
Speaker 4: imprisonment charge because that was the absolute rumors of human captivity.
Speaker 4: And that's what, of course caused all the international fervor.
Speaker 4: I mean think about it. We're a pretty sick country,
Speaker 4: because that's all anybody was interested in, is this woman
Speaker 4: who was kept in a basement against her will, and it's,
Speaker 4: you know, it's a shocking allegation. But what he ended
Speaker 4: up indicting Alvin for was malice murder and then felony murder,
Speaker 4: meaning maybe he didn't have the intent to kill her,
Speaker 4: but he was assaulting her. So that's the third round
Speaker 4: was aggravated assault with his hands. And either way, if
Speaker 4: you didn't find malice, you could have found him guilty
Speaker 4: of felony murder by way of aggravated assault. And so
Speaker 4: I thought it interesting that the allegation of false imprisonment
Speaker 4: did not make it in. But then my friend was
Speaker 4: who is a friend and who was very serious in
Speaker 4: his effort, and he filed a notice to put in
Speaker 4: evidence of the false imprisonment of not only Virginia Ridley,
Speaker 4: but of Alvin's mother, Many Ridley. And then there was
Speaker 4: a very disturbing allegation about Alvin's cats. There was a
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety three Apartment of Aging report where they went
Speaker 4: in looking to see Alvin's mother and they noted some
Speaker 4: conditions of the house and then they also noted there
Speaker 4: are two cats tied to the coffee table. Well, four
Speaker 4: years later, they're going in to retrieve the body of
Speaker 4: Virginia Ridley and responding to that nine to one one call,
Speaker 4: and one of the EMT notes there are two cats
Speaker 4: tied to the coffee table. And so when I saw that,
Speaker 4: I thought, oh my god, this is weird. And I
Speaker 4: talked to Alvin. I said, what is this about cats
Speaker 4: tied to the coffee table? He says, well, when I'm
Speaker 4: bringing stuff in and out of the house, or people
Speaker 4: are coming in and out of the house, which I
Speaker 4: understood was hardly Ever, that was the way to keep
Speaker 4: the cats from running outside the house. As Alvin said,
Speaker 4: Mama didn't want them having no babies. Well, I knew
Speaker 4: for a fact that I got one cat lover on
Speaker 4: the jury that he was gone, and so I told him,
Speaker 4: I said, we have to get these cats to the vet.
Speaker 4: Because when I saw the cats, they appeared fine, but
Speaker 4: it was very dark. I couldn't really see them. I
Speaker 4: explained to him that you know that's something that could
Speaker 4: hurt us. Please let me get them to the vet.
Speaker 4: And of course the last day I could possibly add
Speaker 4: the vet as a witness, Alvin comes to the office wondering,
Speaker 4: why aren't we going to the vet. So the bottom
Speaker 4: line is we got the cats to the vet. They
Speaker 4: ended up being in good health. There were no markings
Speaker 4: around their neck indicating that there was. They were not
Speaker 4: tied very often by the little wine leashes, and I
Speaker 4: even went out to a pet story and bought a
Speaker 4: cat leash just so if in case that evidence got in,
Speaker 4: I could tell a jury. While none of us really
Speaker 4: think of leashing a cat, it happens, and people take
Speaker 4: their cats on walks sometimes. But in any event, for
Speaker 4: this really funny episode of taking these cats to the vet,
Speaker 4: the vet the vet's testimony proffered testimony was these cats
Speaker 4: are in pretty good health and one of them is
Speaker 4: twenty two years old. And so that in a pre
Speaker 4: trial hearing resulted in a ruling by the court that
Speaker 4: there should be no cat evidence coming in and there
Speaker 4: should be no mama men many ridley evidence coming in either.
Speaker 4: So we kept that stuff out. So as long as
Speaker 4: nobody put Alvin's good character into evidence, we should be
Speaker 4: able to keep that out.
Speaker 6: I couldn't believe repeatedly would remarkable that this cat issue
Speaker 6: was an issue at all and included in part of
Speaker 6: the prosecution's allegations, let alone the allegation of the Alvin's
Speaker 6: mother being held hostage to absolutely nothing to these allegations whatsoever.
Speaker 4: I think that they just wanted to make him out
Speaker 4: more weird, and they just assumed that weird equals guilty.
Speaker 6: Sure, let's get to really what the prosecution's case was
Speaker 6: based on was doctor Hellman and Coroner Hollander, and also
Speaker 6: the things that were said to coroner Hollander. So what
Speaker 6: was the supposed cause of death and what was their
Speaker 6: theory as to the circumstances in this homicide.
Speaker 4: Well, the death certificate said homicide and the notion was
Speaker 4: soft strangulation and or smothering. Alvin indicated all along that
Speaker 4: his wife had a seizure that night, that she appeared
Speaker 4: to be fine when he went back to sleep, but
Speaker 4: when he woke up, she had turned over and was
Speaker 4: on her face on the bed and no non responsive.
Speaker 4: Alvin attempted what ended up being a pitiful effort at CPR.
Speaker 4: He didn't know what CPR stood for. He just had
Speaker 4: seen to the degree that any of us that have
Speaker 4: never had CPR training just seeing it on TV, I
Speaker 4: guess see, he tried doing things to her to revive her,
Speaker 4: but they were few and far between sufficient enough to
Speaker 4: revive her. So the allegation was that he had soft
Speaker 4: strangled or smothered her. Well, that's similar to epilepsy death
Speaker 4: face down in a bed where you seize and you
Speaker 4: really can't get enough oxygen in. If you're seizing face
Speaker 4: down on a bed, your airwaves are blocked. And so
Speaker 4: that was our theory, and part of the state's allegation was, well,
Speaker 4: you know, she died because there was not enough care. Well,
Speaker 4: fortunately for Alvin, Virginia's writings explained everything, and I spent
Speaker 4: a week going through them and pagging things that were important.
Speaker 4: For example, in a Bible she wrote a date in
Speaker 4: September of nineteen seventy seven in which she declared that
Speaker 4: She's not going to take her medicine anymore. God's going
Speaker 4: to take care of her. Well, thanks to Alvin being
Speaker 4: a pat brat, I had years of empty epilepsy medicine
Speaker 4: bottles leading up to September nineteen seventy seven when there
Speaker 4: were bottles, for a few months after where there were
Speaker 4: full medicine bottles. So the indication was that Alvin was
Speaker 4: continuing to get her medication for her. At some point,
Speaker 4: Virginia stopped going to the doctor for some reason. The
Speaker 4: doctor started putting the epilepsy medication in Alvin's name, probably
Speaker 4: because he wasn't seeing Virginia any because of her mandate
Speaker 4: that she wasn't getting out. But she had the medicine,
Speaker 4: you know, to take, but she obviously stopped taking it
Speaker 4: and she lived twenty years in one month non medicating.
Speaker 4: But I think it set her up for the classic
Speaker 4: sudden death in epilepsy death in.
Speaker 6: That regard the sudden death during epilepsy. What did you
Speaker 6: determine with Florence.
Speaker 4: Joyner, Well, the flow Joe had a seizure disorder that
Speaker 4: not a lot of people knew about. It explained why
Speaker 4: she didn't run in the Atlanta ninety six Olympics. I
Speaker 4: actually saw her from a distance there because she was
Speaker 4: a superstar, and you know, I was disappointed that I
Speaker 4: didn't get to see her run, But I think it
Speaker 4: was because she was dealing with these issues. So but
Speaker 4: her the particular hemorrhages were around the eyes. They can
Speaker 4: be around the mouth and the soft tissue areas even
Speaker 4: you know, even on other parts to the body from
Speaker 4: the intense internal pressure and blood flow that's going on
Speaker 4: during a seizure. So her autopsy supported the notion that
Speaker 4: if she died with this first class aptopsy, if she
Speaker 4: died of a seizure disorder, then it was an easy
Speaker 4: call to say that Virginia Ridley died of a seizure disorder.
Speaker 4: So you know, I was confident about that because and
Speaker 4: I had given the copy to the DA and he
Speaker 4: had prepped doctor Hellman. Doctor Helman was trying to split
Speaker 4: hairs and say, well, no, no, it's different. Virginia's type
Speaker 4: of petikuia happens when somebody does CPR, do too hard
Speaker 4: or manually asphyxiate them. And the problem is that the
Speaker 4: coroner was brand new, and she is a wonderful person
Speaker 4: who later went on to be quite an effective coroner,
Speaker 4: really concentrating on stopping drug deaths, but at the time
Speaker 4: she was new, and she delivered the body to the
Speaker 4: state Crime Lab in Atlanta with a statement, and the
Speaker 4: statement was this woman has been kept captive in her
Speaker 4: basement for fifteen to twenty years. Well, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: and I argued that that put the notion in doctor
Speaker 4: Hellman's mind that I'm sure he killed her. If anybody
Speaker 4: who would keep somebody locked up for that long, it's
Speaker 4: an easy stretch to think they could kill her. And
Speaker 4: so I think that influenced that decision with him. And
Speaker 4: we had this wonderful epilepsy expert out of South Carolina
Speaker 4: named Braxton Bryant Wannamaker. I found him online, and this
Speaker 4: is early Internet. I had to write down URLs by
Speaker 4: hand and then try to remember and try to type
Speaker 4: them in by hand later. And I've still got those
Speaker 4: handwritten ls that I would find the journals medical journals
Speaker 4: online about sudden death and epilepsy. His name kept popping up.
Speaker 4: So I contacted him and I retained him because I
Speaker 4: wanted him to talk about particular hemorrhages in his clients. Well,
Speaker 4: what's fascinating is before I put him on because I
Speaker 4: was paying him by the hour. So I brought him
Speaker 4: down the night before, put him in a hotel, took
Speaker 4: him to dinner, and that's where my newly wed bride
Speaker 4: and I treated him to dinner. And it was a
Speaker 4: very difficult conversation just because he was so smart and
Speaker 4: I didn't know anything about his subject matter. But I
Speaker 4: was learning as much as I could. But just as
Speaker 4: an aside on the as we were finishing dinner, he said,
Speaker 4: is there anything else unusual about this person? This woman?
Speaker 4: And I laughed and I said she could not even
Speaker 4: burp or anything without writing it down. And he said, oh,
Speaker 4: that's hypergraphia. And you could have picked me up off
Speaker 4: the floor. I had a reason now for this obsessive
Speaker 4: writing that she did, because quite frankly, it worried me
Speaker 4: a little bit. I'm just thinking, you know, why would
Speaker 4: somebody write all the time unless they, you know, just constantly.
Speaker 4: He said he had patients that would bring him journals
Speaker 4: thinking that he would want to read them, and he
Speaker 4: said they're just mundane reports of things that are going
Speaker 4: on in their lives. And that was a huge break
Speaker 4: because it explained it. It's often adjacent with it's often
Speaker 4: adjacent to epilepsy, particularly temporal lobe epilepsy. And he and
Speaker 4: I need to tell you too, that Virginia had trouble
Speaker 4: over the years with having bad reactions to her epilepsy medicine,
Speaker 4: and I think that could have very well influenced her
Speaker 4: decision to stop taking them. And as to her agoraphobia.
Speaker 4: It was obvious, but she seemed pretty happy in her
Speaker 4: existence with first Alvin's mother and father and Alvin and
Speaker 4: then slowly just Alvin. She was quite a reporter of
Speaker 4: things that are going on from their perspective, and I
Speaker 4: suspect that she was the brains behind some of Alvin's litigation.
Speaker 4: I found glossaries that she would write to explain legal terms,
Speaker 4: I think explaining to Alvin. It was fascinating because she
Speaker 4: was definitely the more religious of the two, and she
Speaker 4: filled five Bibles in the margins with her writings, and
Speaker 4: it was just fascinating. I had one known writing of hers,
Speaker 4: and a handwriting analyst will want a government certified example
Speaker 4: at least one, so that they could say, this is
Speaker 4: a known writing of her. It happened in a government office, sir.
Speaker 4: It happened then on a sworn affidavit or something like that,
Speaker 4: and then they compare it to the question documents. Well,
Speaker 4: I couldn't afford to get all of them checked out,
Speaker 4: but I just took sent a bunch of samples to
Speaker 4: Brian Carney in Atlanta, who was a handwriting analyst that
Speaker 4: I knew of, and he came back with a conclusion
Speaker 4: that they were clearly the writing of Virginia Ridley and
Speaker 4: Alvin due exemplars to exclude him. Also had known writing
Speaker 4: examples of Bill and Minnie Ridley, Alvin's parents to eliminate
Speaker 4: them as well.
Speaker 6: Well, Jesus has an opportunity to stop hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 6: let's get to you write early on that when you
Speaker 6: get the advice from your counsel friend, your attorney friend,
Speaker 6: his father had also been one of your mentors in
Speaker 6: that he had discovered something in your discovery. And as
Speaker 6: always what he had said is that you can win
Speaker 6: this case as long as you don't put Alvin on.
Speaker 4: He listened to my cross examination of doctor Hellman, and
Speaker 4: my cross examination of doctor Hellman took a whole day,
Speaker 4: and finally toward the end, doctor Hellman conceded, yes, she
Speaker 4: could have had a seizure, but I still think Alvin
Speaker 4: killed her basically. And that was huge because that was
Speaker 4: an admission that this woman that's reasonable doubt. And so
Speaker 4: Renzo Wiggins, who gave me my first job out of
Speaker 4: law school in his family firm, he also had a
Speaker 4: case where doctor Hellman was going to be a witness,
Speaker 4: so he was taking very close notes, and he offered
Speaker 4: his notes to me and I thanked him, and he said,
Speaker 4: you know, I think you've got this thing one as
Speaker 4: long as you keep Alvin off the stand. And that
Speaker 4: was kind of a joke between us, because we both
Speaker 4: knew of Alvin. We both knew that he would want
Speaker 4: to talk about the county taking his van and not
Speaker 4: his not his dad wife. So I was confident at
Speaker 4: that point, but that was before the next day. The
Speaker 4: most engaged I ever saw Alvin about this case was
Speaker 4: when I would go online and look looking up forensic pathologists,
Speaker 4: and Alvin was suddenly engaged in the case. He was
Speaker 4: interested in a forensic pathologist, and I had to spell
Speaker 4: it every time I brought it up. He would pull
Speaker 4: out a folded up piece of paper out of his
Speaker 4: pocket and he would dutifully write down fr nsiic pathologist,
Speaker 4: and it was getting really old. But Alvin seemed interested,
Speaker 4: and he said, I want to get one. I want
Speaker 4: him to see the house. And I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 4: if I can keep Alvin this engaged, it'll be well
Speaker 4: worth the brief expense of a forensic pathologist. So this
Speaker 4: is nineteen ninety eight. Damn. The Internet. Now, I think
Speaker 4: people would be a lot more skeptical of things that
Speaker 4: they just find on the Internet. But I was green
Speaker 4: and wet behind the ears still of newborn to the Internet.
Speaker 4: And I found this person in Georgia who had a
Speaker 4: fantastic website for nineteen ninety eight. It had some music,
Speaker 4: it had some sixteen bit animation, it had you know,
Speaker 4: it was a forensic pathologist. And I thought, hey, this
Speaker 4: is great there in Georgia. Alvin's engaged, he's excited. Alvin
Speaker 4: kept saying I want him to come to my house
Speaker 4: and didn't realize why, but I went ahead and hired
Speaker 4: this guy. He and I went to the crime lab
Speaker 4: and looked at was preserved of Virginia Ridley, which is
Speaker 4: mostly tongue in throat, where there was nothing remarkable. The
Speaker 4: hyoid bone was indicated as intact, which very often in
Speaker 4: strangulation cases. It's a very delicate bone, and not all
Speaker 4: but I would say most serious strangulation cases it's broken.
Speaker 4: And so that just I wasn't impressed with compared having
Speaker 4: seen Larrence Griffith Joiner's autopsy, which was extensive. You know,
Speaker 4: they didn't even preserve a lot of the brain of
Speaker 4: Virginia Bridley to although there was clear indications in the
Speaker 4: written autopsy, the dictated autopsy of issues of seizure disorder.
Speaker 4: So in any event, you know, this guy went with
Speaker 4: me to the handwriting analyst house as well, and he
Speaker 4: was grilling my handwriting analyst, Brian Carney, and I thought
Speaker 4: this is very odd. And then we get in the
Speaker 4: car and he offers to be a handwriting analyst too, right,
Speaker 4: And I said, it's okay. I got that covered well.
Speaker 4: By the time he comes up to testify the next day,
Speaker 4: I learned what Alvin's plans are. Alvin has has retrieved
Speaker 4: an ancient mannequin from his basement, and he's created a
Speaker 4: non crime scene if you well where he's showing how
Speaker 4: Virginia was in the bed. And this is a very
Speaker 4: difficult house. And I think we really frightened this guy. Sure,
Speaker 4: this guy at this doctor, So we didn't get to
Speaker 4: spend a lot of quality time with him, but I
Speaker 4: put him up the next day because the state had
Speaker 4: made a big deal over the fact that one side
Speaker 4: of the bed seemed to have a depression in it
Speaker 4: and the other did not, indicating that only one person
Speaker 4: was sleeping in that bed and that Virginia likely was
Speaker 4: locked in the basement. Well, Virginia was a very small
Speaker 4: like person. But at the same time, this bed was
Speaker 4: up against a corner of the room and it also
Speaker 4: served us a sofa, if you will, So people sat
Speaker 4: on the edge of the bed to watch TV. And
Speaker 4: it was clear it was clear that was the case.
Speaker 4: So I wanted this and amusing air quotes forensic pathologist
Speaker 4: to just note that for when I put him on
Speaker 4: the stand the next day. Well, turns out my friend
Speaker 4: Buzz the DA was ready for this guy, the witness
Speaker 4: that I put on the stand as a forensic pathologist,
Speaker 4: I did not vet very closely. As it turned out,
Speaker 4: he was not licensed anywhere in the United States to
Speaker 4: do what he claimed he did. He was educated in
Speaker 4: the Dominican Republic. Nothing against that, but that's the only
Speaker 4: place that he was licensed at the time. He just
Speaker 4: kind of was coming off as a bit of a fraud,
Speaker 4: although I think he was very sincere. He belonged to
Speaker 4: a group out of I think Philadelphia called the Viduk Society, right,
Speaker 4: which seems very exclusive, and they only let like eighty
Speaker 4: two people in it at a time, and it explained
Speaker 4: that there it's kind of a crowdsourcing, if you will,
Speaker 4: of experts and they and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 4: he was asking the handwriting analysis so many questions because
Speaker 4: they he kind of assumed knowledge of several different disciplines.
Speaker 4: And so it was a disaster. Buzz destroyed him and
Speaker 4: it was just a low point in the case. Well,
Speaker 4: we went to lunch and I put Alvin in this
Speaker 4: other character in this book that you read about, named
Speaker 4: salesman Sam. I put them in one booth. Alvin had
Speaker 4: some church of his latest church, some followers that were
Speaker 4: with him, so I thought, I'm just going to let
Speaker 4: them eat there. I'm going to eat over here. I'll
Speaker 4: get the bill. Well, somehow during lunch I missed Jesus
Speaker 4: appearing and telling Alvin that he had to testify. And
Speaker 4: Alvin breaks this to me on the way back to
Speaker 4: the courthouse, and I was horrified because, as far as
Speaker 4: I knew, all Alvin wanted to talk about was the
Speaker 4: county taking his van in nineteen eighty four, and not
Speaker 4: his wife. I realized that Alvin was very literal. I
Speaker 4: had found that he was very transactional. At some point
Speaker 4: I was paying him to let me use her evidence.
Speaker 4: I was paying him for cooperation. I bought tombstones for
Speaker 4: his mother, father, wife, and him because they didn't have them,
Speaker 4: and I was doing it to get his cooperation. So
Speaker 4: you know, it's his right as a defendant to testify,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to prepare him for it. And by
Speaker 4: the way, when he brought he insisted on controlling all
Speaker 4: of the writings, and he brought them every day to
Speaker 4: court in these two giant, old, ancient suitcases. And your
Speaker 4: listeners who have seen this case on forensic files will
Speaker 4: remember the juror commenting about all the cockroaches we were
Speaker 4: releasing into that courtroom from these suitcases, and it was
Speaker 4: a total station. Well, the judge mid trial decided this
Speaker 4: was too close to his office, so he ordered us
Speaker 4: to change courtrooms and go into the brand old nineteen
Speaker 4: thirty nine era courtroom in the adjacent building, the old courthouse. Well,
Speaker 4: I was ecstatic because this was the room, the last
Speaker 4: place Virginia Ardly had been seen September fifteen, nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: And here we are now twenty nine years almost twenty
Speaker 4: eight and some change years later, in that courtroom with
Speaker 4: her writings I'm not a real ghost, guy. But it
Speaker 4: was eerie. It was eerie as hell I was feeling.
Speaker 4: I was feeling a lot of power and electricity in
Speaker 4: that room. And of course Jesus had just shown up
Speaker 4: to lunch, so I had to I tried to prep Alvin.
Speaker 4: I took him into the immigated roach room and put
Speaker 4: him on the stand and showed him the different perspective,
Speaker 4: how close he would be to the jury, and he'd
Speaker 4: be looking in a different direction that he'd been looking
Speaker 4: the entire trial. And I told him, I explained to him,
Speaker 4: I said, you know, I've kept some stuff out, like
Speaker 4: the stuff about your mama, stuff about the cats. If
Speaker 4: you open the door to your own character, they're going
Speaker 4: to get that in. And so just please don't say
Speaker 4: I would never do that. I'm not that kind of
Speaker 4: person or anything like that. That's kind of just self serving, right,
Speaker 4: And would open up the door, and you know what,
Speaker 4: an he listened. He realized. I realized that I had
Speaker 4: not respected Alvin and his abilities most of my life.
Speaker 4: And I realized that while I was representing them, he
Speaker 4: was a pretty smart man. His formal education ended after
Speaker 4: high school. He and my sister graduated. She went on
Speaker 4: to become a doctor of education, and he went on
Speaker 4: to be a TV repairman and partially trained by the
Speaker 4: US Army. He got on the stand and he was incredible.
Speaker 4: The juror saw the emotions that he had been accused
Speaker 4: of never having, but still they were kind of misaligned
Speaker 4: to what we would expect them to be. But he
Speaker 4: was charming. But at the same time I would forget
Speaker 4: how literal he was, and so I would get ahead
Speaker 4: of myself and I would say, you know, mister Ridley,
Speaker 4: will you please tell the jury what you've lost? And
Speaker 4: I was hoping he'd say the love of my life,
Speaker 4: my best friend, and being very literal, he said, oh,
Speaker 4: I guess the funeral bill well that the DA just
Speaker 4: went to town on that, and of course broke that
Speaker 4: one off and us in his closing argument. But it
Speaker 4: was just Alvin was fascinating, yes, And I guess I'll
Speaker 4: explain now viewers have read it in the book notes.
Speaker 4: Only three years ago, at the request of a juror
Speaker 4: from our case twenty five years ago, I took Alvin
Speaker 4: for testing. He is deeply on the autism spectrum right,
Speaker 4: and that explains everything. And even I was now more
Speaker 4: familiar with autism but I still didn't patch it. Twenty
Speaker 4: five years ago, nobody was talking about autism and adults.
Speaker 4: They were talking about it in children. The idea of
Speaker 4: a spectrum had just been introduced, it being a spectrum
Speaker 4: of developmental disorders and developmental disorders. But it explained so much.
Speaker 4: It explained the flat effect of his voice, which you know,
Speaker 4: his autistic mannerisms were literally being used against him at trial,
Speaker 4: his mismatched or his emotions not always meeting the moment
Speaker 4: of expectation of emotions. And it made me realize, and
Speaker 4: I've learned that there are five and a half million
Speaker 4: adults walking around out there that have never been diagnosed
Speaker 4: with autism, that it is estimated that there are that
Speaker 4: many undiagnosed autistic adults. Now, they are interacting with people
Speaker 4: every day, and they're interacting with law enforcement and courts
Speaker 4: every day. And you know, I've seen judges go off
Speaker 4: on somebody that they thought was just not engaging or
Speaker 4: interested in enough in what was going on in court.
Speaker 4: And so I could see a person with autism getting
Speaker 4: really bad treatment by the criminal justice system, and with
Speaker 4: the participants just thinking that they're being difficult or being
Speaker 4: purposefully evasive or and what happens. It's a processing issue,
Speaker 4: and Alvin's processing is just different. It's not better or
Speaker 4: worse than mine, it's just different than mine. So we're
Speaker 4: like almost speaking two different languages to each other. So
Speaker 4: I really the call to action for the book is
Speaker 4: for better testing, better recognition, better training for of police
Speaker 4: and inquisitors, and then of course of courts. I can't
Speaker 4: say that I'm certainly glad that we won the case.
Speaker 4: Alvin was acquitted of all charges. The jury was fascinated
Speaker 4: with Virginia's writing and now that it could be explained
Speaker 4: to them that it was the hypergraphia that compelled her
Speaker 4: to write, but it didn't affect what she wrote. The
Speaker 4: minute we walked out of the Kadusa County Courthouse, I thought,
Speaker 4: this is a hell of a story. But I did
Speaker 4: not know of the autism component. And I didn't know
Speaker 4: that until just three years ago, twenty twenty one, And
Speaker 4: that finally made it in my head as a book.
Speaker 4: I had taken runs at it, I had engaged co
Speaker 4: authors because I didn't I lacked confidence in my own
Speaker 4: ability to tell the story. The last person I approached
Speaker 4: was a writer in California who gave me the confidence
Speaker 4: to write it myself. She was my developmental editor. Without her,
Speaker 4: this book wouldn't be here. Because she found a curated
Speaker 4: list of agents. She showed me what a book proposal
Speaker 4: needed to look like. Her name is Bonnie hearn Hill.
Speaker 4: She lives in Fresno, California, and I absolutely owe her
Speaker 4: the world. She found this curated list of agents. Linda
Speaker 4: Connor of the Linda Connor Agency in New York City,
Speaker 4: who had faith in my story, and she found me.
Speaker 4: Michael Hamilton of Kensington or Citadel with Citadel as an
Speaker 4: imprint of Kensington, who got excited about the story. And
Speaker 4: now we are upon on publication day. I think on
Speaker 4: the day this airs. Publication day is tomorrow, And twice
Speaker 4: in the last week and a half I've been notified
Speaker 4: by Michael Hamilton that not only has there been a
Speaker 4: second printing ordered and this is all pre pre orders that,
Speaker 4: but just today learned at the day of the day
Speaker 4: of taping, learned that they have upped the number of
Speaker 4: the second printing. So I really think between the true
Speaker 4: crime fans of forensic files, of American Justice, of snap
Speaker 4: judgment on NPR, people are relating to this story They
Speaker 4: liked the story when they heard it in these other forms,
Speaker 4: and that was before we even knew about Alvin's autism. Now,
Speaker 4: Dan Alvin is just about to turn eighty two years old.
Speaker 4: For the last twenty five years, he and I have
Speaker 4: been lunch companions, very free, equent lunch companions. Now it's
Speaker 4: up to two days a week. My secretary and I
Speaker 4: of my secretary of the last fifteen years, used to
Speaker 4: work with developmentally disabled adults, and she is perfect for Alvin.
Speaker 4: She helps schedule his Veterans Administration clinic visits. We both
Speaker 4: make sure he gets there. We got him through cataract surgery.
Speaker 4: I got him a big ramp built onto his house,
Speaker 4: which they said was the most difficult ramp build they
Speaker 4: had ever done at a house because of its topography.
Speaker 4: And Alvin is having his best life right now. He's
Speaker 4: a lot calmer he actually probably because the community is
Speaker 4: a lot warmer to him. With his permission, we revealed
Speaker 4: his autism diagnosis. A lot of people know and love
Speaker 4: people with autism in their own families, and they see
Speaker 4: now that in Alvin. And so it's really a story
Speaker 4: of redemption of a number of people, including a community.
Speaker 4: And so I'm so appreciative of you having me on
Speaker 4: to tell about my book, and and I would love
Speaker 4: for your viewers to get it. It's uh, it's there's
Speaker 4: more than one zenith Man book out there. This is
Speaker 4: the one with the kissing couple on the cover, and
Speaker 4: that's Alvin and Virginia. That is a photo booth at
Speaker 4: an amusement park in our community called Lake winnipe Sooca.
Speaker 4: And that's a nineteen sixty five photo booth a square
Speaker 4: that and there's another photo of them smiling for the
Speaker 4: camera from the same strip inside the book. So it's
Speaker 4: just you know, it's a it's a love letter to
Speaker 4: my hometown. It's a love letter to my late father.
Speaker 4: This writing this was was catharctic. I'm I feel like
Speaker 4: a load has been lifted off of me. You know.
Speaker 4: Maya Angelo said there's no greater agony than bearing an
Speaker 4: untold story inside of you. I know exactly how that feels,
Speaker 4: because I've been wanting to tell this story for twenty
Speaker 4: five years.
Speaker 6: I want to thank you so much McCracken posting for
Speaker 6: Junior for coming on and talking about Zenisman, death, love
Speaker 6: and redemption in the Georgia courtroom It's been a fascinating
Speaker 6: interview for those people that might want to take another look,
Speaker 6: or do you have a website and do any social media?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, mccrackenposting Jr. For Junior dot com is my book website,
Speaker 4: just playing mccrackenposting dot com is my Facebook site and
Speaker 4: law office site, but add the jar to it for
Speaker 4: the book. On Twitter, it is at real Zenithman, and
Speaker 4: then the other platforms of McCracken posting Junior Twitter threads
Speaker 4: they call it now, Instagram, all those others. But McCracken
Speaker 4: posting Junior on Facebook is kind of a captures everything
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. McCracken posting Junior for zenith Man, Death,
Speaker 6: Love and Rejemption in a Georgia courtroom. Thank you so
Speaker 6: much for this interview. You have a great night.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Good night,