His horrible murder process conquered the nation … But I discovered a secret that proved his innocence

When Alvin Ridley was arrested and accused of the prisoner and killing of his wife in 1997, his story completely conquered the nation.

Alvin – a 55 -year -old TV repairer from Ringgold, Georgia – was soon branded as a ‘Sicko’ that his wife had held, VirginiaCaught for 30 years before he brutally killed her.

Newspapers around the world pushed brutal headlines over him and he was branded as the ‘boogeyman’ by the media.

When his trial began, Alvin’s behavior led even more intrigues in the case and he only deteriorated his reputation.

He released cockroaches in court, was wearing a neck brace despite the fact that he had no injury, and he would change loudly in his pocket during the trial.

He had a ‘flat, apparently emotionless voice’ and ‘a blank, or for some, threatening, staring’, so that the audience was convinced that he was a horrible murderer.

But in reality, Alvin was an misunderstood man who struggled with non -diagnosed autism whose wife had actually died of epilepsy.

And it all only came to the surface thanks to his lawyer, McCracken Poston Jr., who found somehow a way to break down Alvin’s walls and discover the truth, ultimately to help him clear all charges and throw off his horrible reputation.

Now McCracken has spoken exclusively with DailyMail.com about the test.

He explained that it started after Alvin called the police to report that his wife Virginia had “stopped breathing.”

While they looked at her death, researchers discovered that no one in the city had seen or heard of Virginia in almost three decades.

Soon stories burst out in the press that said that Alvin had held her in his basement for the past 30 years before she brutally killed her.

He was eventually arrested and accused of locking up and killing his wife, and defender McCracken, then 37, was assigned to represent him.

McCracken explained that working with Alvin was ‘difficult’ because their conversations were ‘limited to what Alvin wanted to concentrate on’.

“That was [often] Not his business, “he added. ‘In the beginning he was impossible to’ check ‘as a customer.

‘He would not make agreements, not [allow] People to know his schedule. I could not let him concentrate on the issue that is obvious. I had little help from him. ‘

Mccracken admitted that although he occasionally seemed ‘aggressive’, he discovered a softness under the surface that pulled him in.

“He could be quite destroyed about things, felt injustices and his frustration was interpreted as aggression,” he explained.

“I didn’t know it at first, but it didn’t take long to realize that Alvin was really mourning, he just didn’t show it in the typical way.

“By the time of the process I knew he was innocent and he was afraid that I couldn’t do enough for him.”

Months passed when they waited for the start of the process, and Alvin was often locked up in his dilapidated house on the outskirts of the city.

He refused to leave Mccracken in his house, but after working together for more than a year, he finally let him come to Thanksgiving – five weeks before the trial would start. And that is when everything changed.

“It was Thanksgiving, 1998, only five weeks before the trial, when my parents instructed me to take a turkey plate to Alvin,” McCracken recalled.

“That was the last place where I wanted to go away from the case on a rare day. When I turned up at the door and offered him the food, he let me wait a while, and then he invited me.

“Inside, when my eyes adjust, I could see that he had plastered a wall with hundreds of writings.”

The writings? 15,000 notes written by his deceased wife Virginia before her death, who proved that she was not held against her will at all.

In the notes, she revealed that she had epilepsy, was Agorafobe and had chosen to stay inside, which proved the innocence of Alvin.

‘I was so excited to have proof of her daily life for more than 30 years! On the other hand, I had to balance my enthusiasm to ensure that Alvin, who was insisting to keep control of the papers in two old suitcases, would bring them to court, “McCracken continued.

When the process began, Alvin indeed brought them to his two old suitcases … Together with a whole series of cockroaches that ‘infect’ the courtroom.

Nevertheless, thanks to the notes of Virginia, Alvin was ultimately acquitted on all charges. But his story did not end there.

More than two decades after the trial was closed, one of the jury members could not stop thinking about Alvin and the entire test, so she contacted McCracken with a shocking revelation.

Now that she worked as a nurse, she said she thought Alvin might be in the ‘autism spectrum’.

“None of us knew anything about autism in the nineties, but I had learned enough and knew other neurodivergent people by that time, and I knew she was sitting on something,” wore Mccracken.

McCracken encouraged Alvin to seek help and he was eventually diagnosed with autism in 2021, at the age of 79.

“That diagnosis changed how the community saw him. It also forced me to reconsider everything – our tense communication, the process and what justice really meant in his case, “the lawyer added.

In 2024, McCracken wrote a book about the whole thing called Zenith Man: Death, Love and Redemption in a courtroom in Georgia.

He and Alvin started a book tour together to promote it, and he said he really saw Alvin coming out of his shell for the first time.

“He became a rock star! He stole the show with all our performances, “McCracken joked.

Unfortunately, Alvin died at the age of 82 last July, but McCracken believes that his story is ultimately a lucky one.

“He just lived long enough to feel that shift and to enjoy the warmth and affection of his community that had escaped him for a lifetime,” he concluded.