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[Music] in the backwoods of georgia in a dilapidated house a 49 year old recluse named virginia
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ridley was found dead a medical examiner ruled the death a homicide but who would murder someone who seldom
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ventured out of her home investigators found some clues in the notes she had written
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shortly before her death [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] ringgold georgia is a small rural town
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located at the base of the blue ridge mountains life is simple here the main street has only three traffic
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lights and most of the town's 750 residents know or do business with each other
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alvin ridley was a well-known figure in ringgold at one time he ran the town's only
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television repair shop in 1966 he married 18 year old virginia hickey and almost immediately virginia
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cut off all contact with her family alvin said it was because her family was too intrusive
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virginia's sister trixie lacroix says alvin forced virginia to stay away from
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her family i sent them an invitation to every wedding every death every birthing
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in our family to no avail nothing was ever acknowledged nothing my father's death
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my father went to his grave after making every effort possible to try to see his daughter
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never having seen her after she got you know mixed up with mr ridley alvin ridley had a reputation in
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ringgold and it wasn't a particularly good one he was known for filing lawsuits against
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anyone he felt had wronged him and in the process he had made a lot of enemies he's
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always accusing he's very suspicious he trusts no one really and so that obviously put him at odds with a lot of
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people city government on licensing issues the city chief of police of course the the county sheriff
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in 1984 after a minor traffic accident he filed a series of legal actions and got hit with a countersuit
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he lost and had to forfeit his van as payment july 1984 they seized my van without due process a law
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about a fair hearing and it uh somewhere and i returned all my customers and friends and
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suppliers and dealers and creditors against me and they wanted to send me no more products
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so it forced me out of bed the loss of his van meant the failure of his television repair business which
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started a further downward spiral he was known as crazy alvin by the town's people
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his reputation was not helped by the fact that no one had seen alvin's wife virginia not even her family in the 30
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years she was married to alvin what i couldn't understand if she was mad at her family
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why did she not go to the door for friends so that kind of made me believe that maybe possibly he had
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given her instructions not to he got angry at her maybe i told her not to and i the thought crossed my mind maybe
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she was being kept captive what went on in alvin ridley's secluded house was the subject of town gossip
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but on the morning of october 4 1997 it became news virginia ridley was found dead in her
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bed fully clothed by the time medical personnel arrived rigor mortis had set in an indication
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that she had been dead for at least eight hours trixie lecroy was asked to identify her
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sister's body i could not do it i could not do it so my sister's husband was with her
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and she the two of them went in and she came back out and she said you know i'm so glad you didn't go in it
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was not a pretty sight she said her hair has not been combed in years it's just
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it has so many knots in it it has not been combed in years she can't weigh 90 pounds
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she's skin stretched over bone new rumors began to surface in ringgold georgia about alvin ridley and the role
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he might have played in his wife's death in october of 1997 virginia ridley was
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found dead in a house with no phone no running water and infested with ants and cockroaches
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she had been dead at least eight hours before medical personnel arrived which prompted
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questions why had it taken her husband alvin so long to call for help virginia's sister trixie lacroix
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believes if he had called earlier her sister might still be alive there's no doubt in my mind that this
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man was responsible directly or indirectly from my sister's death you cannot convince me of anything else
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investigators traced alvin's steps on the morning of virginia's death alvin said that when he woke up his wife
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was dead he got into his truck and went looking for a telephone he admitted driving by the local fire
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station which could have provided emergency assistance instead he continued driving to a
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telephone outside of town he did not call the local hospital 10 minutes away instead
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he called a hospital in chattanooga tennessee some 30 miles away they told him to dial 9-1-1 for local
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assistance which he finally did leaving this message 9-1-1 where's your emergency
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134 inman street what's the problem i think my wife passed out 134 inman street yeah
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is she breathing i don't think so it's behind the steel plant uh i'm calling from a pay phone booth
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you don't have a phone at your house there's no phone there's no phone there
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investigators were struck by the lack of concern in alvin's voice it was unlike
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most emergency calls they received the initial examination of virginia's body was done by the local coroner
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bonita hollander in virginia's eyes the coroner found particular hemorrhages which are broken
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blood vessels often seen in cases of strangulation or smothering deaths descendant is a female in her late 40s
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decedent is malnourished kill hemorrhages around her eyes the next day a full autopsy was performed
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the medical examiner dr frederick hellman found something not noted during the initial examination deep bruising on
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the muscles of virginia ridley's neck another possible indication of strangulation
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virginia ridley's death was ruled a homicide and her husband alvin was charged with
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murder to those in ringgold who knew alvin ridley as crazy alvin the news came as
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no surprise everybody thought he killed his wife back in the 60s or the early 70s
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and there was even talk that he killed her long long time ago and and then one day he calls 9-1-1 and
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there is a recently dead body in the bed and that's his wife because of the particular hemorrhages in
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the eyes and the condition of the body the coroner suspected foul play and police could find no indication that
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virginia had received routine medical care in the recent past i think they checked the 50 to 100 mile radius
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no doctor no physician no pharmacy no hospital this girl had not been anywhere in 30
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years the town of ringgold was gearing up for the biggest trial in its history and investigators were in for another
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surprise when alvin ridley gave his explanation for how his wife died trixie lacroix regularly visits the
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grave of her sister a woman with whom she has more contact in death than she did in life
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that's because trixie and the rest of her family hadn't seen virginia at all
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during the 30 years she lived with alvin ridley the man now accused of her murder
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i will say this that if there is a god almighty above if there is a day of reckoning for all
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of us which i believe there is i would not want to be him alvin ridley steadfastly maintained his
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innocence i felt terrible sad depressed because i lost a loved one i cared a lot about
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he's married 30 years sweet happy christian married life i never hit her time she never hit me at
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times i was married of course we got in a few arguments because off alvin's defense attorney mccracken
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poston knew that the case against his client wouldn't be easy alvin's reputation and behavior after
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his wife's death made his defense a unique challenge several members of my family just said
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he's crazy he's capable of anything i was about to get married and several members of my wife's family were
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fearful of my getting involved in defending alvin alvin had developed for himself
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somewhat of a reputation as a panhandler or a con man poston visited alvin's run-down house on
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the edge of town and amid the cockroaches and broken windows saw something he hadn't expected
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the walls of the house were plastered with handwritten notes some were letters to congress that alvin
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had written but i began to notice a distinct handwriting that i knew was not alvin's
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and i asked him who wrote this he said well virginia did and i grabbed a piece off the wall and
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you know i said alvin this will save you we've i've got to have all of this
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there were hundreds of notes all apparently in virginia ridley's handwriting
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some dealt with everyday matters like what she had watched on television in notebooks entire chapters of the
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bible had been transcribed repeatedly but most were love letters to alvin ken poston did not believe the love
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notes were the writings of a woman being held against her will but could he prove to a jury that
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virginia had actually written the notes brian carney a forensic document examiner analyzed the letters
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carney had little to work with but he did have some known signatures of virginia ridley on some official
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documents written years earlier and he found a number of unmistakable similarities
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the obvious features that you can see just at a glance are for example the three eyes in virginia's are very tall
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comparatively speaking their lower case letter forms cursive writing but the if you were to draw
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a horizontal line right across the top of this eye all the way to the end of the name
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you would see that all of the eyes are taller than the other internal letter forms and you scan down through the
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series in comparison of question to known you can clearly see that this eye feature
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is a habitual writing movement of this this particular writer and i was able to state
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that there were strong indications that virginia was the writer of the comparable
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entries so what we're essentially talking about is those letter combinations that have
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that are the same as the name virginia and the signatures that have the given name virginia
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virginia's family told investigators that virginia suffered from epilepsy as
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a child epilepsy is a neurological condition in which uncontrolled electrical charges
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from the cerebral cortex can result in violent seizures and convulsions according to her writings
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virginia had stopped taking her epilepsy medication years earlier relying instead on her faith in god to
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heal her the defense consulted dr braxton wanamaker who is a neurologist he said the particular hemorrhages
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around virginia's eyes were consistent with what is called sudden death epilepsy
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dr wanamaker says sudden death epilepsy occurs in patients who stop taking their
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medication or haven't been properly diagnosed i've had other patients who are sleeping
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with their spouses and they wake up and find that their spouse is dead so people may or may not witness the
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seizure and there are some of us who are not certain that all of these deaths are
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associated with seizure per se but may have some epileptic activity in the brain that changes heart
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rhythms or changes respiratory mechanisms such that people die from that alvin ridley said his wife had
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seizures on a regular basis he said she had a particularly bad one on the night before she died after she had the season
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got over it i said are you going to be all right and she smiled at me says yes honey i
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love you so you know i thought she'd be all right so i went off to sleep but according to alvin
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she was dead when he tried to wake her the next day alvin said the seizures were the reason
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no one had seen virginia in all those years she was so embarrassed about her seizures she wanted no contact with the
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outside world not even her family [Music] but the defense had one last hurdle how to explain the bruising on virginia
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ridley's neck evidence that the medical examiner said pointed to homicide [Music]
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judge ralph van pelt presided over alvin ridley's murder trial and immediately
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had him evaluated by a psychologist he certainly probably would have qualified i think for mentally ill under
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the georgia statute but that's only if you're found guilty but mentally ill
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these the psych the report indicated that he was competent to stand trial could assist his attorney in a defense
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and knew right from wrong at the trial alvin's defense team needed to refute
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the prosecution's contention that the bruises on virginia ridley's neck were
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evidence of strangulation dr robert goldberg a forensic pathologist hired by the defense
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discovered that an employee in the coroner's office had drawn blood from virginia ridley's neck for a toxicology
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test which was a complete break from standard procedure this is highly irregular
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and is something that procedurally is an error when the autopsy was conducted the next
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day dr goldberg believes the needle marks had developed into bruises which are known as artifact a term for any changes
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in the body caused by postmortem evaluation i think it would be absolutely essential
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that any coroner have some autopsy experience even if they don't conduct the autopsy
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themselves they should know the appropriate procedures it was clear to me that this coroner was
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way way out of line with appropriate procedure in georgia the coroner is an elected
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official and this was the first suspicious death thanita hollander investigated after her
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election alvin's attorney believes that the coroner's inexperience and her own
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personal suspicions about alvin ridley affected her judgment when that body went to the state crime lab
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and she accompanied it she reported when they arrived this woman has been locked in a basement for
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30 years the state pathologist that conducted the autopsy i think that was an improper
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suggestion based on no fact that made it easy for him to conclude homicide by asphyxiation
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alvin ridley took the stand in his own defense he said he drove by the local fire
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station after his wife's death because he had had a prior run-in with the people there and didn't trust them
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he said he called the hospital in chattanooga because that's where he'd taken his mother years earlier it was
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the only facility he was familiar with after two hours of deliberation the jury acquitted alvin ridley of all
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charges he claims it was his wife virginia testifying through her letters who kept him from a life behind bars
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i felt like my wife actually and the lord saved me and ended here alvin ridley still lives in the same
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dilapidated home on the outskirts of town and still talks about restarting his television repair business
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he visits virginia's grave regularly a privilege he enjoys because of the role science played
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improving his innocence i guess he was a strange man i understood him to be a hermit
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i understood him not to have the social skills that the rest of society has and unfortunately i believe that had a
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great deal to do with the fact that he was tried fortunately the truth went out and he was acquitted
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good lord if it hadn't been for this scientific evidence the risk was so high
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that the local community prejudices and biases about alvin ridley and his years and years of strange behavior
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would have been difficult to overcome i think it's a story about how the system works
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that someone has their right to make the state prove that they're guilty prove
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that they did it beyond a reasonable doubt and a fellow with just very modest resources was able
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to come in and prove that he was not guilty established that he was not guilty [Music]
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so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you