Alvin Ridley’s Lawyer Explains It All

Q&A With McCracken Poston, Who Solved the Virginia Ridley Case
(Forensic Files, ‘Killigraphy’)

Book cover with Virginia and Alvin Ridley
Book available online


The strange and ultimately beautiful story of Virginia Ridley’s life with her oddball husband has captivated Forensic Files viewers since it first aired 25 years ago. A recent survey ranked “Killigraphy” in the top three favorites of all 400 episodes of the series.

But the narrative would have had a much different conclusion if not for McCracken Poston, the lawyer tasked with proving Alvin Ridley’s innocence in the 1997 death of the reclusive Virginia.

Alvin owned a television repair business in the town of Ringgold, Georgia. Everyone agreed that he did a great job of replacing cathode ray tubes, but few had anything else good to say about him.

He threatened people who came to the door of his house, hid in his own bushes to spy on passersby, and motored around town with a fake woman in his front seat.

Most troubling of all, he had a real wife at home who almost never appeared in public — and she cut off contact with her family members despite their attempts to reach her. When Virginia Ridley turned up dead with petechial hemorrhages at the age of 49, law enforcement concluded that Alvin had held her hostage for decades and then strangled her.

Fortunately, inside Alvin’s sloppy hovel of a house, Poston discovered evidence that Alvin and Virginia were just two unusual people who suited each other.

Virginia had hypergraphia — an affinity for constantly writing down the minutiae of everyday life.

Pieces of paper with her handwriting described a contented home life with Alvin. The topics included what she and Alvin ate for dinner and which TV shows they watched; one of the papers listed the cast of The Waltons.

McCracken Poston with his arm around Alvin Ridley
McCracken Poston named a downtown building after Alvin Ridley. Photo by Emily Dorio

At the trial, Poston argued that Virginia stayed inside the house because she wanted to — she had epilepsy and feared having seizures in front of anyone but Alvin — and that she died of natural causes.

In his 2024 book, Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, Poston describes how Alvin Ridley, who died at age 82 on July 2, 2024, turned into a sympathetic character and how his own relationship with Alvin evolved into a friendship.

“Alvin was neurodivergent. That’s modern parlance for autistic,” said Poston. “I think Virginia was on the spectrum too. Alvin was her perfect partner.”

Poston, who is a former Georgia state legislator and a onetime candidate for U.S. Congress and now has a solo law office in Ringgold, indulged some of my curiosity about the case. Here are excerpts from our Zoom interview on July 22:

Alvin Ridley in his back yard with an old TV
Alvin Ridley was task-oriented in his work as a TV repairman,
according to his former lawyer. Photo by Thomas England

Did you know Alvin Ridley before the murder accusations? When I was growing up, he was our TV repairman.

Did he really hide in his bushes? I wouldn’t be surprised because he didn’t trust people and wanted to see who was there. He was hiding in his own bushes in his own yard. 

Sorry, but I have to ask about the blowup doll of a woman Alvin reportedly drove around in his car. It was a mannequin from the late 1950s, a chalky broken mannequin, but because of the way people in town think, it became a blowup sex doll. When Alvin was in high school, people saw him with this mannequin in the passenger seat. He used it to make a woman he was interested in jealous. The mannequin made an appearance again after someone talked about it during jury selection and it reminded Alvin it was in his basement because he never threw anything away, and he broke it out again. I just thought, this guy cannot catch a break. People are talking about things that happened decades ago.

The Forensic Files episode prompted negative reader-comments about Virginia’s relatives, the Hickeys. Were they really the enemy for repeatedly trying to reach her? I don’t blame the Hickeys. It was a very unusual situation. I would have been as aggressive trying to contact my sisters. But Virginia quoted the Bible about being married, being one, and said she wished her parents would leave her and her husband alone. She persuaded a judge and courtroom officers that she was where she wanted to be. Virginia’s cousin showed up at one of my book signings and said that Virginia told her she wanted to stay away from her parents. The Hickeys were probably responsible for getting Virginia and Alvin evicted from public housing in the 1970s.

Young Virginia Ridley
Virginia Ridley

Reports describe the Ridleys’ house as cockroach-infested. It’s hard to believe a woman would live that way by choice. What’s your take? Virginia kept a neat home. The pictures of the house were taken after she died. Alvin was the one who ate and left half-eaten food around the house. He had a vehicle that he ate in, and a rat came in it. After the trial, I was in the house very briefly when we were doing media, and the house had gotten worse with hoarder-packrat stuff.

The house turned out to be a gold mine when you noticed that Alvin had covered the walls with papers with Virginia’s handwriting — describing a happy home life. Had you heard about hypergraphia before then? No. Shortly before I put the epilepsy expert on the witness stand, he asked if there was anything else strange about Virginia. I said, yes, she wrote down everything she’d ever done. He said, I’ve heard of that. A lot of my patients have hypergraphia.

[Poston also learned that epileptic seizures sometimes cause petechial hemorrhages — enabling him to counter the prosecution’s contentions that the marks came from manual strangulation; Virginia died from having an epileptic seizure during sleep, he argued.]

Did Virginia’s hypergraphia extend to the outside world? Yes, she corresponded with elected officials. She wrote to President Richard Nixon about being evicted from public housing, because the law is under HUD. U.S. Senator David Henry Gambrell wrote her back, noting her letter to President Nixon.

A tabloid story with headline calling Alvin Ridley a sicko and murderer
Virginia Ridley’s death made great tabloid fodder

How did you end up getting so close to Alvin? He felt comfortable in my law office. We began meeting for lunch regularly after the trial.

I knew he had a kidney problem and tried to get him help. When he went into the hospital, I said that they’d better keep him there for a few days. They got his kidney function up and he moved to a step-down facility, and then he allowed me to put him in another rehab-nursing home, so that Medicaid would kick in once his funds were exhausted. Then, he had a heart attack.

In the hospital, I said, did you ever think that Virginia and your parents are calling to you? He said, no, I want to stay here with you. He said he was going to live to 110. I said, you just want 30 more years of free lunches from me. I didn’t ever think he would die so soon.

The last time I saw him, he was in great distress. It looked like another coronary issue. I said, Alvin, I’m looking forward to meeting Virginia, and he said when we get up there, I’ll show you where you can fish and catch 30 fish an hour. Then he said, ‘Oh Lordy.’ I was holding his hand when died.♠

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR


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Alvin Ridley: Hide Your Love Away

A Small-Town Outcast Finds Redemption
(‘Killigraphy,’ Forensic Files)

In the land of Forensic Files, when one spouse murders another, the accused is often a respected citizen (Barbara Stager, Richard Nyhuis) who community members can’t imagine being capable of such a crime — until they see the evidence.

Alvin Ridley’s case was just the opposite.

Virginia Ridley as a young woman
Virginia Ridley

When paramedics pulled the petite body of Virginia Ridley, 49, out of his shack in Ringgold, Georgia, locals thought he had imprisoned her and then killed her.

They knew Alvin as the reclusive, hostile man who sometimes hid in his own bushes and peeped at passersby.

Batty but benign. At the time of Virginia’s death, in 1997, Alvin had shuttered his TV repair shop on Nashville Street and seemed intent on earning a living via lawsuits. Surely, he strangled Virginia to death to collect on an insurance policy or maybe just because he was a mean husband.

But after Alvin went on trial for murder, his defense team trotted out evidence that persuaded the jury and the media that he might have been a cantankerous oddball but he was no murderer.

For this week, I looked for more background information on the Ridleys and their marriage as well as an update on Alvin. So let’s get going on the recap of “Killigraphy” along with extra information from internet research.

‘Set’ for business. Alvin Eugene Ridley was an only child born on March 3, 1942 in Soddy, Tennessee to Minnie Sue and Bill Ridley, and the family later moved across the border to Georgia. The government drafted Alvin into the military, where he learned how to fix electronics. After his discharge, he moved back into his parents’ house, a small structure lying between a steel mill and railroad tracks.

‘Zenith Man’ was one of the kinder nicknames for Alvin Ridley

Next up, Alvin worked repairing and selling TVs in his store in downtown Ringgold, the seat of Catoosa County. Sources vary as to whether Alvin’s father started the business and then passed it down to Alvin or his parents set up the shop just for their son. They owned the building.

Bill died in 1982, and it was then that Alvin started acting weird, the Atlanta Constitution reported. He would drive around in a red sports car with a plastic dummy of a woman in the passenger seat, according to the Sunday Mail. Folks started referring to him as Crazy Al.

He was not particularly adept at personal hygiene.

Fragile flower. While he was still in the military, he became pen pals with Virginia Hickey after meeting her at someone’s house circa 1964, the Sunday Mail said. So where did this mystery girl-woman come from?

Virginia Gail Hickey entered the world on April 8, 1948 in Rossville, Georgia. According to the Atlanta Constitution, she acquired epilepsy at age 9 after a head injury. With her tiny figure, blond hair, and cute facial features, she resembled a doll.

She was described as extremely shy.

Habitual no-show. At just 18 years of age, she married Alvin. In a photo of the couple celebrating her birthday with her mother, Adell, in 1966, Virginia looks like a child bride. Family members complained that Alvin bossed her around.

Newlywed Virginia and Alvin Ridley

The Sunday Mail reported that the lovebirds originally lived in public housing but were kicked out. After that, Alvin and Virginia moved into the dilapidated house at 134 Inman Street where he grew up.

Virginia didn’t work outside the home and soon began to shun her friends and relatives, even skipping family weddings and her father’s funeral. She didn’t venture outside her and Alvin’s house. Her sister Linda Barber said that when people tried to visit, Alvin would tell them to get lost or threaten to kill them.

Rare glimpse. The Hickeys tried to reach Virginia via a newspaper ad — “Parents Seek Married Daughter” — but never got a reply. 

In 1967, Virginia’s family instigated a legal action to force Alvin to “produce” her to make sure that she was alive and well. Virginia showed up to court in the flesh and explained that she liked married life with Alvin and wanted to be left alone with him.

That cemented the break between her and the other Hickeys and also marked one of the last—if not the last — time anyone saw Virginia alive in public.

The Ridleys shared a shanty with no phone service

Toxic visitor. But why did she like to stay hidden? Numerous sources say that Virginia feared having an epileptic seizure in the presence of anyone other than Alvin. But she stopped taking her medicine because she believed God would protect her.

In addition to friends and relatives, outsiders weren’t welcome in the Ridleys’ house. Early on in the marriage, an exterminator who entered their home made a pass at Virginia, which greatly rattled the couple, according to the Washington Post.

When people asked about Virginia, Alvin told them she had left him and moved away, according to the Associated Press.

Litigious local. Rumormongers whispered that Virginia had gone to live in a mental institution, the Washington Post story reported.

In time, some locals forgot that Alvin was once married or thought that Virginia had long ago left him. Others didn’t know he ever had a wife.

After abandoning his TV repair shop, Alvin focused more on his apparent hobby of filing lawsuits. He had already unsuccessfully sued the government over the ejection from the housing projects.

Locals would occasionally see him selling tube socks at a flea market.

Unfazed. According to the Sunday Mail, Alvin “convinced himself he was a pauper, despite the fact that he owned his house, the boarded-up TV repair shop and some valuable land in nearby Tennessee.” The land was reportedly valued at $500,000.

Aside from the litigation and sales, Alvin was not one to interact much. He made eye contact with people but didn’t say hello to them. He posted No Trespassing signs on his fence. The house had metal bars on the windows.

On October 4, 1997, the man the town considered an isolated bachelor used a payphone to report the death of his wife. His voice seemed solemn enough but a little too calm considering the circumstances. “My wife’s not breathing,” he said, according to the Atlanta Constitution. “Y’all hurry up.”

Choking suspicion. First responder Blake Hodges smelled cat urine upon entering the house and noted it was the first time he’d met Alvin in person — he only knew of him as a scary loner, according to Blake’s interview on “The Alvin and Virginia Ridley Story,” an episode of Death in a Small Town, narrated by Bill Kurtis.

Alvin Ridley in a TV interview circa 2001

Hodges found Virginia lying still and looking underfed and unkempt. According to Forensic Files, her hair hadn’t been combed in years.

The house was a cockroach-infested hovel.

Quite a sensation. Alvin said that Virginia died of a seizure during her sleep. But the coroner found a classic sign of strangulation that Forensic Files watchers know well. Virginia had petechial hemorrhages in her eyes (Stefanie RabinowitzJenna Verhaalen).

Alvin was arrested and charged with murder in May 1997.

The runup to the trial of the man who allegedly held his wife hostage for 30 years was big news around the country and beyond. England’s Yorkshire Post ran an item about it. Court TV wanted to film the 1999 trial, but the judge said no.

Chance at absolution. The prosecution suggested that Alvin considered Virginia a liability, a drain on his finances. Medical examiner Vanita Hullander testified that Alvin didn’t give a consistent narrative regarding her death. And the petechial hemorrhages spoke for themselves as proof of deliberately inflicted suffocation, the prosecution contended.

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But defense lawyer McCracken Poston, who later acknowledged Alvin as the most difficult client he ever defended, rolled out a wealth of forensic and circumstantial evidence that wore away at what many had considered the county’s slam-dunk case against Alvin.

First off, although Vanita Hullander — who in the early 1980s worked in a space adjacent to Alvin’s store — denied any bias against Alvin, she acknowledged that she was afraid of him.

Voice from the grave. And the reports about the petechial hemorrhages from autopsies conducted by the county as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation didn’t necessarily point to guilt on Alvin’s part. Medical experts testified that seizures could cause such hemorrhages in a phenomenon known as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy — of which failure to take prescribed medication is a risk factor.

And according to the Washington Post, Virginia didn’t die looking unkempt. She had polished toenails and hair done up with pretty pins.

Finally, Virginia herself had left a record of her existence with Alvin that contradicted allegations that she was the prisoner of a tyrannical husband.

Pet peeve. Virginia had hypergraphia, a condition that compels people to extensively write about their own lives. The walls of the shack were covered with notes revealing a simple and contented life with her husband. She wrote about what she and Alvin ate for dinner, that they watched Elvis Presley on TV, and that she and her husband cleaned the basement. One note listed the cast of The Waltons. Virginia penned love letters to Alvin that attested to a good marriage. She also wrote of her feeling that the world was against her and Alvin.

Before they met: Virginia and Alvin

A forensic document examiner verified that Virginia, not Alvin or anyone else, had written the notes.

(And fortunately for Alvin, his lawyer had done some preemptive work to make sure accusations of animal neglect didn’t come up. Before the trial, Poston made Alvin take his and Virginia’s two cats — that they kept as pets on string leashes attached to their coffee table — to the veterinarian. “I said, ‘By the way, when these cats come out of the house, they better have some names,'” he later recalled. Alvin declared them “Meow-y” and “Kitty,” the vet gave them a decent bill of health, and Alvin started giving them free range of the house, according to an interview with Poston on the University of Georgia library website.)

Emotion comes to surface. Against his team’s advice, Alvin took the witness stand. He spoke of his reluctance to trust people and his love for his wife. Alvin said they rarely argued and there was no violence in the marriage.

“The reason I testified then was because I didn’t have nothing to hide,” Alvin told the Walker County Register/Chattanooga County News in 2017. “The main thing was just telling the truth about everything … and I even cried, and the jury saw me crying.”

Within just hours of listening to prosecutors call him a captor and killer, Alvin got to hear the jurors declare him not guilty. Suddenly, he was a free man smiling on the courthouse steps.

Logical explanation. So what happened to Alvin after his legal problems went away?

He moved back into the shack on Inman Street. Poston took him for mental health testing, which yielded a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

Caffeine Addicts is in the spot where Alvin had his store

It explained “the way he and Virginia lived, very seldom leaving their home, the flat emotionless monotone voice when he called for help after Virginia’s seizure, his ‘eccentricities,’ as those were called at the time,” Poston told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

He referred to Alvin as the Boo Radley of the town.

More than 20 years after the acquittal, the two men were meeting regularly for lunch, and Alvin, 81, reportedly snagged at least one girlfriend post-trial.

Alvin died on July 2, 2024 after years of declining health.

The space that the TV shop occupied now houses an eatery offering white chocolate lattes and tomato basil wraps. Poston owns the entire structure today and named it the Ridley Building after the ornery but harmless widower of Ringgold, Georgia.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. – RR


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