The true life story behind McCracken Poston Jr.’s new book “Zenith Man: Death, Love and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom” is one of amazing — if not downright eerie — coincidences.
“I had been struggling to write it for 22 years,” the author said at a special presentation at Dalton State College on Wednesday, April 3. “I just could not come up with ‘Why did this happen?’ or ‘Why was this this way?’”
In the late 1990s, Poston served as defense counsel for Ringgold’s Alvin Ridley, a man put on trial for the alleged murder of his late wife, Virginia.
The trial itself was a tabloid sensation. “Sicko holds wife hostage for 30 years — then kills her,” reads one particularly lurid headline.
But to Poston, an attorney still making the rounds of the Conasauga Judicial Circuit in Whitfield and Murray counties today, his client was anything but the monster painted by some publications.
“How can I explain Alvin?” he said. “A lawyer and a client who were so different and so at odds with each other that he was bringing his own motions to file — which he called ‘emotions’ — because he didn’t think mine were good enough.”
The story of Ridley’s case was the subject of episodes of several popular cable television programs, such as “Forensic Files” and “American Justice.”
Poston even recorded five-plus hours of commentary about the case for the National Public Radio “Snap Judgment” program — which was boiled down into a roughly half-hour podcast.
“So obviously, things did not get in that story that I felt were really important to get in,” he said. “But what made me write the book was a juror in the case speaking to a podcaster from UTC (the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), who was interviewing us both.”
She asked if he believed Ridley — who was ultimately acquitted of the murder charge — may be autistic.
“I don’t know why I never thought of that,” Poston said. “You have to understand, 25 years ago nobody was talking about autism in adults.”
Poston said that Ridley, a television repairman by trade, was routinely regarded as “peculiar” by his neighbors.
He said that Ridley’s mindset reminded him of a “Rube Goldberg machine,” referencing comical illustrations depicting elaborate contraptions designed to complete the simplest of tasks.
On the shuttered windows of his old repair shop, he said Ridley would post missives “blaming everybody in town for all his ills.” He also had a penchant for filing lawsuits — almost always serving as his own legal counsel.
He said Ridley was also prone to conspiracy theories. Poston recalled a grandiose hypothesis of his client, in which he contended that an automobile accident was ultimately responsible for his father’s fatal cancer.
“Alvin had a dignity about him, even doing and saying things that I knew were not going to fly well,” he said. “He and Virginia both had this weird view that the federal government was going to ‘save’ them.”
Poston recounted the events of Oct. 4, 1997, when Ridley used a pay phone to call Catoosa County authorities — a pay phone that was literally across the street from the county’s 911 office.
“Lacking emotion, he said, ‘I think my wife’s passed out,’” Poston recollected.
At a residence off Inman Street, responders found the body of Ridley’s spouse.
“The portions of the 911 call not shared with the public or played on news stations were the parts where the caller shared that his wife was, in his words, ‘epi-letic,’” Poston said. “Or that he ended the call with a request — ‘Please hurry.’”
At that time, Poston — who once served for eight years as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives — said he was still reeling from a thrashing in a 1996 U.S. congressional race, which he lost to future Georgia governor Nathan Deal.
He said he first heard about the discovery of the body from chatter at a fast-food place in Ringgold.
“I was just like everybody else, ‘Who’s missing?’,” he said. “I didn’t want to think that Alvin Ridley was capable of that, because my father actually liked him — my father traded with him when the TV shop was open, but they continued to have sort of a friendship.”
Virginia Ridley was a recluse. Newspaper clippings from as far back as 1968 indicate that her parents had not seen her for more than three years.
Some alleged that she was being held captive by her husband — a theory that Poston flatly rejected.
He said one of the biggest pieces of evidence that led to Ridley’s acquittal were reams of journals penned by the decedent.
Years and years of letters and writings, he said, dispelled any allegations that she was a “hostage” in her own home.
“She wrote three U.S. presidents when she’s supposed to be locked in a basement,” he recalled.
Amazingly, Poston said his own client refused to let him in his home. Had it not been for the gift of a Thanksgiving turkey, he said he may not have been exposed to the decedent’s diaries at all.
As for why the generally distrustful Ridley sought his legal counsel, in particular, Ridley said the answer came in the form of a videocassette.
His spouse recorded a televised congressional debate, telling her husband that she believed Poston appeared to be a decent person.
Those are hardly the only incredible twists of fate in the case, he continued.
He recalled his client bringing suitcases to court — ones that were infested with cockroaches.
“We had to change courtrooms mid-trial and because we changed courtrooms mid-trial, we ended up in the old Catoosa County courthouse built in 1939,” Poston said. “The last place Virginia Ridley had ever been seen alive, Sept. 15, 1970, at the eviction trial — her parents got them evicted from public housing, trying to flush her out.”
Poston recounted the trial. From the outset, he said there was an agreement that Ridley would not testify before jurors.
Then Ridley claimed that he saw “Jesus” appear and tell him that he needed to testify after all.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” Poston said. “I just explained to him ‘Don’t put your own character into evidence, don’t say ‘I would never do that.’”
The actual testimony, he recollected, went fairly well — until the very end.
“‘Alvin, what have you lost here?’” he asked his client. “I really just wanted him to say ‘The love of my life, my best friend’ — and he goes ‘Oh, I guess the funeral bill.’”
In hindsight, Poston said he realizes that during the trial there were some things he told Ridley that his client simply could not process.
“At the same time, I wasn’t processing him,” he said. “Thank God we are now detecting (autism spectrum disorders) and giving services and helping children grow into adults who can navigate the neurotypical world.”
Poston recalled visiting his own father in a hospital and telling him that he was advising Ridley.
“My Dad said, ‘Son, he’s a good man, he just thinks differently than a lot of people,’” he noted.
Ultimately, Poston said the overarching theme of the book is apparent.
“Everybody is redeemed in this book — the coroner had Alvin over at Christmas, at her home,” he said.
Throughout his lifetime, Poston said his father struggled with alcoholism.
“It affected me as a child, because I couldn’t remember anything that I ever did that my Dad ever came to that I wanted him to be there,” he said.
Toward the end of the trial, Ridley nudged his defense attorney and informed him of a presence in the courtroom.
“At age 39, my Dad finally came to something that I was doing,” Poston recalled. “It was very special to me.”