Forensic Files - Season 5, Episode 9 - Killigraphy - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

This examination of the role autopsies play in murder investigations focuses on the suspicious death of Virginia Ridley. Police charge her mentally unstable husband with murder, but a medical examiner discovers that she died of natural causes.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Virginia Ridley was found dead, her husband Alvin was acquitted of murder after a controversial trial involving epilepsy and forensic evidence.

Key points

Virginia Ridley's Mysterious Death. Virginia Ridley was found dead in her home, leading to questions about her husband Alvin.
Alvin Ridley's Troubling Reputation. Alvin Ridley, known as 'Crazy Alvin,' had a history of conflict and lawsuits in his town.
The Trial of Alvin Ridley. Alvin Ridley's trial captivated the small town of Ringgold, raising questions about his innocence.
The Role of Science in the Trial. Forensic evidence played a crucial role in determining the outcome of Alvin Ridley's trial.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I could not do it, I could not do it.

Trixie Lacroix on identifying her sister's body.

4:52WatchNov 11, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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