the village eccentric on trial
Ringgold,
Ga. -A jury of six men and six women required only two hours Friday to
decide that Alvin Ridley, the village eccentric, is not guilty of killing the
wife no one had seen for 25 years.
Ridley, 56, a man so suspicious he wouldn't even trust his
attorney to hold the defense evidence, burst into tears when the court clerk
read the verdict. Moments later he stepped out of the Catoosa County Courthouse,
a suitcase in one hand and a large green trash bag in the other --- both full of
the evidence he insisted on taking home with him every night of his weeklong
trial.
The one-time television repairman, ruled competent to stand
trial despite his paranoia, was charged with murdering his wife, Virginia. She
was found dead in bed Oct. 4, 1997. She had not been seen since the early 1970s
and many people didn't even know Ridley had a wife. Those who did said he put
them off with various statements --- she had left him, she was in a mental
hospital --- when they asked about her.
She was, however, apparently in their run-down, roach-ridden
North Georgia house all the time. Judging from Ridley's often confusing
testimony, she turned into a recluse after an Orkin man burst in on her while
she was changing clothes in 1970.
Ridley's
attorney, former legislator Ken Poston, told the jury in closing arguments
Friday that "obviously Virginia shared his paranoia. They fed off each
other's suspicions."
It was Ridley's own litigious tendencies that led to the seizing of
his van in 1984 for attorney's fees, an event that has obsessed him ever since,
although he got the van back quickly.
He quit working and began begging, although he still owned a
storefront on Ringgold's main street, his house and some valuable acreage in
Tennessee. "Alvin is trapped in his own mind in a poverty he feels there is
no way out of," Poston said.
Poston contended Virginia Ridley died of epilepsy, which had
afflicted her since childhood. He acknowledged that Ridley's self-perceived
poverty resulted in a lack of medical attention for her, but pointed out that
"Alvin is not charged with being a poor provider."
District Attorney Buzz Franklin contended that Ridley has
"shown over the years he's the biggest liar around," pointing to the
defendant's constantly shifting stories about the events surrounding his wife's
death, his delusions and his persistence in hiding his wife.
Franklin said after the verdict that he was "disappointed, but
I'm not really surprised."
The state's only direct evidence was the autopsy report that
concluded Ridley's wife had suffocated. Since Ridley was the only person
actually aware of her existence, he had to be charged. The remainder of the
state's case was built upon the defendant's bizarre behavior, with which
residents of this town of 2,000 already were well aware.
The jury issued a collective statement saying simply: "We did
not feel the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt" that Ridley killed his
wife.
When Ridley emerged beaming from the courthouse, a television
reporter rushed up and asked how he felt now that he had been found innocent.
"I
feel innocent," Ridley mumbled. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
January 16, 1999
*************************************************
Ringgold, Ga. -The murder trial of Alvin Ridley was a drama with a cast of
characters ranging from the urbane to the bizarre, and a defendant who had spent
30 years making himself an object of suspicion.
After five days of testimony, a jury swiftly found Ridley not
guilty of killing his wife, accepting that her suffocation death might also have
been brought on by her epilepsy.
That was the only charge against Ridley, but much of the trial was
spent discussing why his wife, until her death, hadn't been seen by anyone
outside Ridley's family since about 1975.
Ridley, diagnosed as paranoid but judged competent to stand trial,
was certainly the most bizarre of the witnesses appearing in Catoosa County
Superior Court in North Georgia last week. In a virtual demonstration of how to
become a murder suspect, Ridley:
-- Kept his wife out of sight for 25 years, lying about her whereabouts.
-- Got into a row with a neighbor, threatening her with a broom and
terrifying her. She later became the county coroner and made the first
investigation of Ridley's wife's death. Ridley also sued the chief of police
over a routine report of a fender-bender accident and then ran, unsuccessfully,
for sheriff to redress the wrongs he believed had been done to him.
--Woke up to find his wife dead in bed on Oct. 4, 1997, and then,
lacking a telephone, drove past the fire station and its ambulance to reach a
pay phone. He called a Chattanooga hospital, which advised him to call 911.
--Told a somewhat different story about that morning almost every
time he was asked about it, and insisted he hadn't suffocated his wife before
anyone had determined the cause of death.
Among other stars of the trial were:
--Dr. Frederick Hellman, the suave and darkly handsome GBI
pathologist who performed the autopsy on Virginia Ridley and ruled she had been
suffocated, thus providing the state with its only real evidence. Virtually
every time defense attorney Ken Poston asked him a question, the doctor would
swivel around in his chair to face the jury --- often turning his back on Poston
--- and launch into a lecture that began in a rich baritone with "Ladies
and gentlemen, as I have already testified . . . " The lecture did not
always contain the answer to Poston's question.
--Ben McGaha, more commonly known as "Salesman Sam," a
grungy, gray-bearded character who sells shoes and advertising from a bicycle
and said he had become Ridley's adviser. "Anything anybody tells me, I
remember it," he said, his eyes flashing. "I never forget
anything." Then he admitted he had forgotten several things.
--Dr. Robert Goldberg, a large, rumpled man who bills himself as a
forensic investigator. He appeared on behalf of Ridley, whose home he described
as "a wonderland for a microbiology study." He met with good humor a
fierce state attack on his scrawny credentials, which included major
contributions to a Hardy Boys and a Nancy Drew mystery.
--The cockroaches that kept crawling out of the suitcases Ridley
brought to court every morning with his evidence.
With the trial almost concluded and the judge even considering a
directed verdict of innocent, Ridley decided God required him to testify. Poston
could not convince him otherwise. Disaster was narrowly averted; a less
objective jury might have been disaffected by some of his testimony. "What
have you lost in all this?" Poston asked him. After long thought, Ridley
replied, "Well, I lost the funeral expenses . . . "
Poston called Ridley the biggest pack rat in the county, since he
never threw anything away, including his wife's seemingly incessant scribblings.
Virginia Ridley, Poston postulated, must have suffered from hypergraphia, a
condition often found in epilepsy victims which results in compulsive writing.
It saved her husband from prison, for it showed that rather than being held
captive, she was enthusiastically sharing his paranoia.
Poston, in his closing argument, uttered the biggest understatement
of the week. "I'm sure glad Alvin didn't make it to sheriff," he
said. -- Atlanta Journal Constitution, January 17, 1999
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