- The autopsy played an important role in a murder investigation fof the suspicious 1997 death of Georgia resident Virginia Ridley. Police charged her mentally-unstable husband Alan with murder, but a medical examiner discovered that she died of other causes. Originally aired as Season 5, Episode 9.
- This is the subject of the book, "Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom" (Citadel, Hardcover/Ebook, February 2024), but this was an early documentary made years before Alvin Ridley's diagnosis with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The book goes into significantly more detail about the attorney/client conflict and the trial. This story was pitched to the producers of Forensic Files by Robert Goldberg, who appeared at the trial as a defense witness. However, viewers should note that Goldberg's role was greatly enhanced by Goldberg on the program. In fact, Goldberg was hired only one week before the trial. Before he was hired, the defense had already developed the theory that Virginia died from her epilepsy condition, and had already secured the autopsy of Olympic track star Florence Griffith Joyner. Goldberg's appearance on the stand was a disaster for the defense, the District Attorney knowing more about his flimsy resume than the defense counsel did. The defense "expert" had to admit that he was not licensed in Georgia, or in any U.S. state, to even conduct autopsies. Virginia's voluminous loose-leaf journal, or diary of the daily events in her life, numbered an estimated twenty thousand pages. Thanks to Dr. Braxton Bryant Wannamaker, of Orangeburg, SC, this was explained to the jury as a condition called "hypergraphia", which is sometimes associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. In 2021, Alvin Ridley's trial lawyer, with whom he has maintained a close friendship, took him to Atlanta where he was tested and diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. To Poston, this explained so much about Alvin's difficulties being misunderstood and misjudged throughout his whole life. Today, Alvin Ridley is warmly received around town, and has lunch with Poston twice a week, rigidly.
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