today, innocent in prison, if the man who did the crime had not confessed and dna wasn't available to corroborate his confession. i'd still be there. 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 note she had written shortly before her death. 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 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. >> 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. >> 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 of the law, without a fair hearing, and and some way or another it turned all my customers, friends, suppliers, dealers and creditors against me, and they wanted to send me no more product, so it forced me out of business.

>> 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 townspeople. 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. >> and the thought crossed my mind maybe she was being kept captive. >> what went on inside alvin ridley's secluded house was the subject of town gossip. but on the morning of october 4th, 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 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 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. the real question that needs to be asked is "what is it that we can do that is impactful?"

what the cloud enables is computing to empower cancer researchers. it used to take two weeks to sequence and analyze a genome; with the microsoft cloud we can analyze 100 per day. whatever i can do to help compute a cure for cancer, that's what i'd like to do. put under a microscope, we can see all the bacteria that still exists. polident's unique micro clean formula works in just 3 minutes, killing 99.99% of odor causing bacteria. for a cleaner, fresher, brighter denture every day.

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 lecroy, 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, for my sister's death. you cannot convince me of anything else. >> investigators traced alvin's steps on the morning of virginia's death. >> you awake? you all right? >> 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 ten minutes away.

instead, he called a hospital in chattanooga, tennessee, some 30 miles away. they told him to dial 911 for local assistance, which he finally did, leaving this message. >> 911, what is 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. i'm calling from a pay phone booth. >> you don't have a phone at your house? >> there's no phone, huh-uh. >> there's no phone there? >> investigators were struck by the lack of concern in alvin's voice. it was unlike most emergency calls they receive. the initial examination of virginia's body was done by the local coroner, bonita hullander. in virginia's eyes, the coroner found petechial hemorrhages

which are broken blood vessels often seen in cases of strangulation or smothering deaths. the next day, a full autopsy was performed. the medical examiner 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 early '70s. there was even talk that he killed her a long, long time ago. >> i think they checked a 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 lecroy regularly in our house, we do just about everything online.

and our old internet just wasn't cutting it. so i switched us from u-verse to xfinity. they have the fastest, most reliable internet. which is perfect for me, because i think everything should just work. works? works. works! works? works. works.

trixie lecroy 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, 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 that i lost a loved one that i cared a lot about. we was married 30 years.

sweet healthy christian married life. i never hit her a time. she never hit me a time when we was married. >> 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. >> poston visited alvin's rundown 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 said, alvin, this will save you. 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 i's in virginia are very tall compa comparatively speaking. they're lower case letter forms, cursive writing. but if you were to draw a horizontal line right across the top of this "i," all the way to the end of the name, you would see that all of the i's are all taller than the other letter forms. you can clearly see that this "i" feature is a habitual writing movement of 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 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 a neurologist. he said the petechial hemorrhages around virginia's eyes were consistent with what is called sudden death epilepsy. the doctor said that sudden death epilepsy occurs in patients who have stopped taking their medication, or haven't been properly diagnosed. >> i've had other patients that

are sleeping with their spouses, and they wake up and find 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 her seizure and got over that, i said, are you going to be all right? and she smiled at me and 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. 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. wvo: caring for someone with alzheimer's means

i am a lot of things. i am his guardian. i am his voice. so i asked about adding once-daily namenda xr to his current treatment for moderate to severe alzheimer's. it works differently. when added to another alzheimer's treatment, like aricept®, it may improve overall function and cognition. and may slow the worsening of symptoms for a while. vo: namenda xr doesn't change how the disease progresses. it shouldn't be taken by anyone allergic to memantine, or who's had a bad reaction to namenda xr or its ingredients. before starting treatment, tell their doctor if they have, or ever had a seizure disorder difficulty passing urine, liver, kidney, or bladder problems, and about any medications they're taking. certain medications, changes in diet, or medical conditions may affect the amount of namenda xr in the body... and may increase side effects. the most common side effects... are headache, diarrhea, and dizziness. wvo: all my life, he's protected me. now i am giving back.

ask their doctor about adding... once-daily namenda xr.

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 for mentally ill under the georgia statute, but that's only if you're found guilty but mentally ill. 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 out of line with appropriate procedure.

>> in georgia, the coroner is an elected official, and this was the first suspicious death anita hullander 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 had 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 and the lord saved me, and the jury. >> 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 in proving 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. >> 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, it 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, establish that he was not guilty. several suspects in the robbery and murder of a retired couple. unfortunately, the forensic evidence was inconclusive. ten years later, a determined forensic scientist with materials used by dentists found evidence that had previously been overlooked, and in so doing, made scientific history. bakersfield, california, known for its oil fields, wide open spaces and an aggressive crime investigation unit.