A tabloid headline screamed: “Sicko Holds Wife Hostage 30 Years … Then Kills Her.”
It doesn’t get much more sensational than that after Alvin Ridley’s wife was discovered dead in her home.
Predictably, residents of the small north Georgia town of Ringgold assumed the reclusive hoarder and generally odd local figure had murdered her.
Georgia Writers Museum has announced its next Crime & Wine event will feature McCracken Poston Jr., the defense attorney who represented Ridley in the notorious “Zenith Man” murder trial. Poston is the author of ZenithMan: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, a recent release.
This will be no ordinary Crime & Wine. The crime has been solved, but the wild details must be heard to be believed. Poston is a master storyteller who will have you on the edge of your seat.
As an idealistic young defense attorney, Poston was still stinging from a failed congressional run when he took the case to defend the eccentric Ridley – dubbed “Zenith Man” for his work repairing televisions – after Ridley was charged with the murder of his equally reclusive wife.
The court of public opinion would serve as judge and jury for Ridley, who also created no shortage of bizarre problems for his lawyer. Belligerent, often incomprehensible, and secretive, he was a complete puzzle to his lawyer. Investigators would make assumptions about Ridley’s wife, Virginia, too, assuming the same biases that Ringgold townspeople held – that Ridley had been holding her captive for decades.
The case seemed doomed to fail, until the diligent lawyer looked past his community’s biases, as well as his own, to reveal an astonishing truth “with the kinds of twists and turns that will make readers think it’s great fiction – except it all happened,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham in reviewing the book.
This legal thriller, filled with courtroom drama, is a fantastical true crime tale more than two decades in the making.
Set in the Appalachian foothills, the story spotlights a small town of prying eyes and devastating gossip that would push two people with disabilities behind closed doors. The story will keep you on the edge of your seat right up to its surprise ending.
This special GWM Crime & Wine event will be held on June 22. Doors open at The Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton at 6:30 p.m. for a 7 p.m. program start. Tickets are $40 each and are available now online at georgiawritersmuseum.org.
This program promises to sell out, so contact the museum soon to register and preorder a copy of Poston’s book for signing by the author afterward.