Dirty Work - Snap Classic

This week on Snap Judgment… it's the tough jobs, the rough jobs, the roll up your sleeves and get it done jobs. When the oddest man in town is arrested for murder, only one lawyer steps up to represent him. Plus misadventures under the Not-So-Big Top. STORIES The Writing Is On The Wall When the scariest man in town is arrested for murder, only one lawyer volunteers to represent him... Produced by Joe Rosenberg, sound design by Renzo Gorrio. Artwork by Teo Ducot. Corrections: In a previous version, McCracken Poston is referred to as both a state senator and state representative. He was a state representative, not a state senator. Also, Virginia Ridley is described as having last been seen in public in 1980, 17 years before the events described in this story. In fact it was in 1970, 27 years before. The Indiana Bust-Out How does a well-mannered math kid become a first-class hustler? Through the ancient carnie tradition of "The Indiana Bust-Out." Check out Pete’s book -- Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist Produced by Davey Kim, sound design by Leon Morimoto and Davey Kim. Season 16 - Episode 42 - Classic Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United has spent the last 80 years defending your right to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Through film screenings, speaking engagements, and valuable resources like the Know Your Rights in Public School Guides, AU empowers people nationwide to recommit to the separation of church and state, protecting individual freedoms and strengthening our democracy for all. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more at au.org/TENC.

• 0:51Glynn Washington?

  What do you get for the person who says, "I don't need anything"? Nothing? Okay, put a bow on that. Because Shop brings a whole bunch of stores together at shop.com. Cookware, cakes, toys, high-tech, type in what you're looking for and search across stores at once. Find brands you love. Check out fast and track every order in one spot. Because somewhere in there is the thing that makes them go "That!" That's what it is, "That!" And to celebrate, the all-new shop.com, Shop is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. That's Shop's rewards currency.

• 1:31Glynn Washington?

  1,000 shoppers are each going to win $1,000 in Shop Cash, just in time for the holidays. Get something for the people on your list. And yes, you're allowed to put your own name on there. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:09Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so, this is a story about a trick. A trick played on me with great fanfare and elaborate execution. Fifth grade. Fancher Elementary, Mount Pleasant, Michigan. First day of school. Big assembly in the multipurpose room. And the principal himself steps forward and says he's looking for a new crop of young heroes. Tells us that. School crossing guards. Ensure the safety of our community and our afforded great respect and admiration. Who's up for the challenge? Shh, I am. And all of us with our hands in the air were taken up front and silently presented an orange vest. They whisk us to another room and tell us all about crossing streets.

• 2:51Glynn Washington?

  They give us a pen we can stick on our vest that reads "Crossing Guard", and a whistle. And finally, they hand out posting assignments. Mine was far away at the outskirts of the Fancher Elementary School territory, but I don't mind. Put on a vest that demands respect, authority, and I wait to help someone across the street. And that's when a pack of seventh graders show up. I hold out my hand in an exercise of raw power, and they smack me around the nose and ears and promise a jalapeno wedgie if I ever try that again. Lesson learned.

• 3:32Glynn Washington?

  So I wait and I wait and I wait, and there's just one kid. One kid who needs a crossing guard. Gerald. Snot-nosed second grader. So I walk little Jerry across the street. And that's it. For Jerry, I gotta stand there for 35 minutes. Them's the rules. Alright.

• 3:52Glynn Washington?

  I've got no problem with that, but, see, in Michigan, there are two seasons. Winter and almost winter.

• 4:01Glynn Washington?

  And September doesn't count. By October, the chill comes quick. By November, the entire state is unlivable. But I have to stand there like an idiot waiting for little Jerry, who most of the time never shows up because his mother drives him to school in a heated car comfort so he doesn't get his little ewzy-weezy-coaty-woaty.

• 4:21Glynn Washington?

  I hate Jerry. I hate his mother, and I hate the principal for sending me out there.

• 4:27Glynn Washington?

  And one night, one of the coldest nights ever in recorded history, I know that school's gonna be canceled the next morning, and it's gonna be awesome. It would be cruel and inhumane to send kids out into an ice storm. I go to bed with a smile on my face, planning out all the fun I'm gonna have when I finally get out of bed. Next morning, turn on the TV and watch in horror as they list every single school district in the area except for mine.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  It's a cold one out there today, folks. Stay indoors if you can.

• 5:03Glynn Washington?

  And I'm supposed to go out and wait in the blizzard for little Jerry, who 99% chance is in the car with his mother drinking hot chocolate? No, no, I can't do it. I just can't. So I hide out for a little while, just hide out, warm, and sneak into school with my orange vest on, like, what's up, what's up? And yeah, after the first bell, snot-nosed little Jerry wanders and cries, "Nobody was there to help me across the street." The principal's all like, "Their election of duty, and someone could have been seriously

• 5:48Glynn Washington?

  injured, and you have to apologize." Miss Jerry's mother makes sure to drive her pride and joy every day after that, saves a dirty look for me. The next year, when a new principal gives the same speech about how he's looking for a new crop of young heroes, I can't believe I raised my hand. I don't know, I figure, maybe finally, I get the respect I deserve.

• 6:24Glynn Washington?

  Today on Snap Judgment from WNYC and NPR, dirty work. Amazing stories from real people doing the job nobody wants to do. My name is Glynn Washington. Please bring some hot chocolate for your crossing guard, because you're listening. It's Snap Judgment.

• 6:58Glynn Washington?

  Snap, for our first piece, I want to let you know that if you're not comfortable with things like autopsies and coroner's reports, this story contains some graphic imagery. That said, I strongly encourage you to keep listening because our guest name has to be the coolest name of anyone we've ever had on the show. Snap producer Joe Rosenberg takes it from here.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  The town of Ringgold, Georgia is your classic southern small town. Nestled in the northwest corner of the state, along the border with Tennessee, it's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone's story. Which means that everyone knows the story of what happened to McCracken Poston. Today, McCracken is a lawyer with a small practice in town. But 20 years ago, he was the district's state senator.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  And in 1996, I lost by landslide. I raced for the United States Congress. I was the first Democrat since the Civil War to lose this district. And I lost every county. So I said my goodbyes, gave my concession speech for the media. I basically saw everybody out, thanked them all, locked up the campaign office on the end of the block of this old historic block in Ringgold. And I was walking back to my vehicle when I heard this voice

• 8:42Speaker 03

  that was coming from a long-shuttered Zenith television repair shop, and it said, "You got beat, didn't you?" And the voice from the shadows belonged to Alvin Ridley.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Alvin Ridley had been a TV repairman in town for all of my childhood. But the place had been shuttered inexplicably in the early 1980s and everybody said he just kind of lost his mind. He probably was there that night posting some of the missives on the inside of the glass that he always did, accusing the local government of running all his customers off. He had allegedly threatened people's lives when they had crossed him. And he had become more and more reclusive. His house was frightening looking. It was boarded up.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  The once-opened porch had been closed in with "keep out" and "no trespassing." And the feeling of neighbors and children was that he was the boogeyman. It didn't scare me, but you know, I continued walking. I didn't think of him anymore. And then October 4th, 1997 happened. I went into town and people were excitedly talking about that there was a dead woman found at Crazy Alvin Ridley's place. People just didn't know if this was a rotting corpse, or skeletal remains, or the last

• 10:29Speaker 03

  thing on anybody's mind was a freshly dead woman, which is what it was. So when that word came out, everybody was saying, "Well, who is that? Who's missing?" And then the wave of information came out that he says it's his wife.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Did you know he had a wife?

• 10:52Speaker 03

  No. It was a shock. I had no knowledge that he had a wife. Nobody that regularly interacted with him knew that he had a wife.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  The deceased's name was Virginia Ridley, and records confirmed that she had, in fact, been married to Alvin for many years. But beyond that, no one knew anything about her. Where had she been all this time? What had she been doing? More to the point, perhaps, what had Alvin been doing?

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Probably the thing that kind of made everybody suspicious from the beginning was that Alvin did not behave like you would expect someone to behave if you woke up and found your spouse in bed with you dead.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  This is Kimberly Barnes. She was the editor of the local paper back in 1997. And she says that although there wasn't much solid information at first, what was eventually learned about Alvin's behavior on the day of Virginia's death didn't look good.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  In the conversation that he had with the 911 operator, he was very, you know, flat. It was very much, "My wife is dead." There was no emotion. You got nothing.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Alvin told the authorities that Virginia had died from an epileptic seizure. But death from epilepsy is incredibly rare in this day and age. So Alvin's story just didn't ring true to either the coroner or the medical examiner.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  And when the coroner got to the house, he didn't want to let them in the house, which, of course, made them think, "Okay, what are you hiding?"

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Well, they found family of his wife and had them come identify the body. And they told a story that Alvin Ridley had been holding their loved one against her will since approximately 1968.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Virginia's family had tried multiple times over the years to see her. But Alvin had always told them that she didn't want to be bothered, even to go to her own father's funeral. They had a hard time believing that, as did everyone else now.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  And the story was that he kept her in a basement, only let her out when he was home, and then just decided to kill her.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  So if you wanted to paint a grim picture, you got that picture, you know, very plainly.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Now, they had not charged him yet. So he was walking about free. And so just a matter of days after that news came out, I started running into him. And in the exact same spot every day. And the second day, I remember he just cast a look at me and nodded his head back and kept going. And I started realizing that it was by design, that he was waiting on me. And so Monday or Tuesday of the next week, just as a kind of a test, I just stopped in my tracks. And I said, "How are you doing, Mr. Ridley?" And he screwed his mouth up and looked almost like a child

• 14:09Speaker 03

  that was, had his feelings hurt. And started crying out, he was lashing out.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Alvin started rambling about a long list of grievances, conspiracy theories, vendettas. The town, he was sure, was out to get him. It was as if the suspicions surrounding his wife's death were just the final straw.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  He said, "Oh, yeah, and they're saying that I held her for ransom, and then I killed her." Well, the first thing out of my mind was just what I'd been through in my campaign, because this was a town who had completely rejected me. And I said, "I know exactly how you feel." And I think it just was kind of a joke for me, but it just kind of hit him as somebody who was connecting with him. And so he, he thought he could talk to me.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  But as they kept talking, it started to become clear democratic in that Alvin wasn't just looking for a sympathetic ear. He needed a lawyer.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  And where in the past, I would have been very wary that Alvin Ridley was guilty. How is this going to affect my politics? Suddenly with a vengeance, I didn't care. I almost wanted to represent him to get back at the town who had rejected me. So I said, "If you want me to help you, we've got to meet."

• 15:37Speaker 02

  When Alvin was arrested for Virginia's murder, to everyone's surprise, McCracken not only represented him at the hearing, but was able to get him out on bail.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Of course, everybody's pointing and whispering and talking about him. And seeing me with him, you know, their once state representative and failed congressional candidate, started another wave of whispers. And the rumors were so prevalent that Alvin had kept his wife hostage, they weren't even saying allegedly. They were saying, you know, "Did he kill her after keeping her hostage for 30 years?"

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, the only person who was really getting to know Alvin was McCracken. And McCracken wasn't sure what to think.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  He was 56 years old, and he looked much older. I don't think anybody would choose to have the life that he had. He always was wearing clothes that were old. He always did keep his hair combed well, and he was always shaved, which I thought was interesting, since he didn't have running water in his home. So he had a bit of pride about him. But he was starting to fall apart. He started wearing this neck brace. It was like one of these collars that people who fake car accidents wear. It was a pacifier, in a way.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  It allowed him to look pitiful and feel pitiful at the same time. But this one was so old and sweaty and brown that it really just reeked. Finally, I said, "Alvin, do me a favor. Before we go to court, I want you to go down to the truck stop, shower, take you some clean clothes, because it's really getting hard to sit next to you, buddy."

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Well, I was working at my office that night, and a skunk was in my air conditioning duct. And it sprayed up where I visibly saw spray. It settled on all of the files of the case. It got on me. And I go to court the next day, and Alvin Ridley gets to say to me, "I don't know if I can sit next to you." And it was a realization that sometimes we can't help our circumstances.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  McCracken ended up with a lot of anecdotes about Alvin like this, ones where Alvin would somehow manage to turn the tables on him, in a fun way. But Alvin never really seemed threatening to McCracken. If anything, he just seemed confused and scared, harmless.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  And then, finally, I got this state discovery packet. And this is when I first saw the autopsy.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Before McCracken had represented him, Alvin had been obsessed with trying to get the state not to perform an autopsy. And now McCracken thought he could see why.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  It was some pretty damning stuff. The medical examiner looked at a body that was a delicate, small-framed woman, about 49 years old, with petechial hemorrhages around her eyes and mouth, which are indicative in cases of asphyxiation.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  What did that say to you about your client?

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I knew that bad things happen to good people. I didn't know if it was possible that they had had a fight. I kept... I tried to keep my mind open, but I felt like he had probably done it, that he was grieving terribly over it. And... But it was what I thought.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Compounding that was the issue of Alvin's home, where they'd found Virginia's body, the same house with all the "keep out" signs and boarded-up windows.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  And I'd been asking to get in his home for months with a camera, and he just wouldn't let me. He was acting so strange not letting me in. So here we were, a couple of weeks before a potential murder trial, and I had nothing. I had nothing. As a defense.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Then there was the matter of jury selection.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  It's very hard to pick a jury in a small town for somebody like Alvin Ridley. Almost all of them knew him by reputation. Almost all of them had heard about the case. That was a huge thing to overcome, and I was not completely confident with the jury that we got.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  I honest to goodness, never in a million years thought I would be picked on that jury. Never. I mean, it was a joke for me even to be there.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  This is Kimberly Barnes again, the journalist. She just happened to be called for jury selection that day. But of course, she had been covering Alvin's case. In most courtrooms, even having read an article about a case is enough to get you kicked out of the jury pool.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  And it was like, okay, yeah, I'll go down there. I'll collect my 40 bucks and, you know, they will dismiss me and say, yah, ha, ha, ha, glad to see you. Go on home.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, that didn't go so good.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Apparently that's not enough to get you off the jury. And, uh, and she got on and I thought, now, how is this really going to work?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Did you feel like, um, were you regretting taking on this case by, at this point?

• 21:12Speaker 03

  Oh, it was not just me. I had a judge tell me, well, everybody's saying you two deserve each other. And, uh, so, you know, it was another,

• 21:28Speaker 03

  another, uh, potential failure in the making.

• 21:44Glynn Washington?

  When Snap Judgment, the Dirty Work episode returns, the trial of Alvin Ridley. Don't miss a moment. Snap Judgment, the Dirty Work episode. Stay tuned.

• 21:59Glynn Washington?

  Look, recently, I just had the treatment. I needed a sofa, wanted to finally, finally have something nice. And I picked out a beautiful leather couch, gorgeous, from Article. And it recently arrived, and I cannot stop looking at it. It's stunning, and it's time because the age of throwaway, fast fashion nonsense is over. The time of craft and quality is now. And not only do you get all of this without a huge markup, it's not just a bunch of parts in a box that you can't put together either. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the US and Canada with options for

• 22:41Glynn Washington?

  professional assembly if you prefer a hands-off experience. And Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/snap, and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com/snap for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Did you ever look at your credit card bill and think, how did that happen? What am I gonna do? I need a plan? Well, I did. Let me tell you something. Having a plan is one thing, but using it, watching that number, that I owe the credit

• 23:24Glynn Washington?

  people number go to zero, that is something different. And Monarch helped me get there. The debt paid on simulator and visualizer uses your real balances and payments to project your debt-free date. Try different payments, see what gets you there sooner, watch that date move, and when you hit zero, that's when you get the budget for the celebration. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SNAP at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SNAP.

• 24:10Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Dirty Work episode. And know this, Snapers, we're about to play the second part of a two-part story on the murder trial of Alvin Ridley. If you're just joining us on the radio, stop now. Take this opportunity to subscribe to our podcast and listen to part one. And if you're listening to these words for the second time because you took my advice, you made a very good decision. Our own Joe Rosenberg takes it from here.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  In hindsight, it's easy to see that McCracken Poston had made a terrible mistake. One shouldn't go out of one's way to represent the scariest man in town on a murder charge. But he had, and now McCracken was beginning to suspect that one judge was right, that he and Alvin deserved each other. Just before jury selection, he had found two key pieces of exculpatory evidence. It turned out that another autopsy of someone who had died from an epileptic seizure demonstrated that such a seizure could produce the kind of petechial hemorrhaging around the eyes and mouth found on Virginia. That would support Alvin's version of events, but for McCracken, it wasn't enough.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  It mitigated toward reasonable doubt. And that's the only way I thought about it right there because I still had that nagging doubt. You know, why would the woman not want to get out and see her family? Why would she not want to go to her father's funeral? You know, what is going on with this mystery woman? And here's his own lawyer begging to get in that house, and he keeps putting me off. Well, Thanksgiving came, and toward the end of Thanksgiving dinner, my parents said, "We want to package up some food and we want you to take it to Mr. Ridley."

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Well, that's the last place I wanted to go on Thanksgiving. But without calling him or anything, I drove back to his house and I've got a couple of grocery bags. And he comes to the door and opens it. And I said, Alvin, my folks wanted you to have some food for Thanksgiving. He looked at the bags, he looked at me, and he said, wait just a minute. And he closed the door. And I can hear him inside like he's talking to somebody. And then he comes and opens the door. And I get to go into this very, very strange place. The first door is a closed-in porch. And it was not a pleasant place to be.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  There was a lot of vermin and a lot of just odor. But when you turn to the right, you go into basically the main room of the house. I can't see anything well because the whole room is dark and it's illuminated by like a single red, large Christmas light bulb. But then a regular bulb comes on. And right there in front of me, along one whole wall and part of another wall, there's all this stuff. And it was just about every type of paper or cardboard that you can imagine, that anything that could bear ink.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  And it was attached to the wall in every way you could attach such to a wall. The cardboard, the heavier stuff was nailed, stapled, the paper was taped.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  And when McCracken looked closely, he could see that every item was covered from top to bottom in writing.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  And it was all done in this very unique hand. And I said, Alvin, what is this? And he said, well, Virginia wrote it.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Virginia had something that's not uncommon in patients with epilepsy called hypergraphia. It compelled her to write down everything that she possibly could write down. She'd had the condition for decades.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  And from the tens of thousands of documents, I found something from just about every month of 27 years. She talked about the moon landings. There's a poem. There's a funny reference to something going on in town. She wrote three US presidents. The most interesting thing was that she had written a proposed script for the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. And I couldn't believe it. I said, Alvin, I gotta have this.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  The problem was, Alvin said, "You can't have any of this. It's all I've got left over." And so I had to compromise with him.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  On the first day of the trial, when Alvin and McCracken walked into the courtroom, everyone noticed the same thing.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Alvin's got these suitcases that look like they're from 1954. And we were all wondering what was in the suitcases. And at one point, the suitcase is sitting open, and you see McCracken kind of reach over with his foot and kind of start stomping. And that foot keeps stepping out further and further away from the desk. And he's stomping roaches.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  I had cockroaches crawling all over me. I had to be on constant watch. They were crawling on our table. They were crawling up my tie. They were about to drive us crazy.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  And of course, the jurors are sitting over there just cracking up. Because we didn't know what was crawling out of those suitcases next. But when he opened them up, what they were were Virginia's testimony.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  And the jurors were leaning forward, spellbound, because here is the mystery woman that no one knew existed, speaking out from the dead.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Whether it was on the back of an envelope or a grocery receipt, the answers were there. You know, this whole thing of, you know, he kept her locked up in a way from her family. Well, no, because she had written that her family was now Alvin. All of her writings were Alvin and Virginia, Alvin and Virginia, Alvin and Virginia. So she was choosing to be there.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  In her writings, Virginia explained how she never ventured outside because of her epilepsy. She'd always been painfully shy, and her greatest fear was going out in public and then having an epileptic fit.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  And in one of the five Bibles that she filled up the margins with her own writing, on a date in 1977, she wrote, "I've stopped taking my medicine today. God has told me he's going to take care of me from here on." And she lived 20 years not medicating. And that, of course, set her up for the classic sudden death and epilepsy case.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  The same kind of sudden death and epilepsy that produces the same petechial hemorrhage around the eyes and mouth that the medical examiner had interpreted as a sign of strangulation.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  And what was happening is the better things happened, we started getting a little following in the courthouse. And one of my lawyer friends, he came up and said, "You've got this thing won as long as you keep Alvin Ridley off the stand." And I just said, "Yeah, that's the plan. There's no way I'm going to put him on the stand." And of course, that's when I sent Alvin to lunch. And Jesus appeared to him in a vision during lunch and told him that he had to testify.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Were you surprised when Alvin took the stand?

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Floored.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  And you kind of saw McCracken when he, when Alvin was going to the stand, this look on his face like, well, it's all done with now.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  And I was very frightened that something was going to come up that I wasn't expecting. Alvin had done enough strange things. And what made it more frightening for me was that this man is innocent.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  I didn't know what to think. I wasn't convinced that the prosecution had made their case that yes, you know, he had done these things that he was accused of, but you know, we are all capable. I was, I was still sitting on that fence. But when Alvin took the stand, I remember somebody asking, did you have children or why didn't you have children? And his response was very sad and no, we were never blessed. So what you got was Virginia was his whole world.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  And as we were waiting for the jury, he got very quiet. And I saw the concern on his face because any sentence of just about any length with Alvin would have been like a death sentence. I, I didn't know if I had done enough. I didn't know if I could do enough. And as I stood in the corner of the courtroom at the window, kind of facing out, I realized that I was not only praying with him, but that I had my arm around him tight, shoulder to shoulder. I didn't smell him.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Nothing about him bothered me at that moment. We had been through a war together. And then the court clerk lets the judge know that the jury has a verdict. And you just would have to hear his voice. Just this booming in the Superior Court for the county of Catoosa, state of Georgia, criminal action number 98 CR 836, the state of Georgia versus Alvin and Jaden Ridley. And all this buildup and you're quaking in your seat. Verdict, we the jury find the defendant.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Count one, not guilty. Count two, not guilty. Count three, not guilty.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  The courtroom erupted. McCracken probably fell out of his chair and Alvin started crying. I truly don't think he believed that it was going to come back not guilty.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  And then we walked together out on the courthouse steps, which was a special place for me because that's where I had accepted my first election. That's where I conceded my last defeat in politics. And being with Alvin on those steps was the best of all of those times.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  For Virginia's family, the courthouse steps also had a special meaning. They were the last place they or anyone else had seen Virginia in public 27 years before.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Joe, I have one more thing that I left out. Throughout the case, I would get frustrated with him. And I would ask him, I would say, "Why did you stalk me? Why were you constantly making sure we were running into each other? And why did you pick me?" And he would always say, "I'll tell you one day." But that was such a classic put off from Alvin, I didn't think anything of it. And then at the very end of the trial, we were in my office, and I just, you know, I guess I just said, "Alvin, thank you. You know, this is a special thing for me to be a part of."

• 36:18Speaker 03

  And I said, "Why, you told me you were going to tell me one day why you picked me." And he said, "I'm going to." And he has a VHS cassette. And on it was my name.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  In Virginia's handwriting. I pop it in the VCR. And it is the one televised debate of my congressional race in 1996. And he said, "She always liked you."

• 37:12Glynn Washington?

  The Kraken Poston continues to practice law out of his offices in downtown Ringgold. Alvin Ridley's house sits just a few blocks away. Now, we reached out to Alvin for this story, but he declined an interview, saying that he values his privacy and that he still loves and misses his wife. It's been 19 years since she passed away. The original score for that story was created by Renzo Goryeo, and the piece was produced by Joe Rosenberg.

• 37:45Glynn Washington?

  Now, when Snap Judgment continues, we're gonna get some cotton candy, some deep-fried Coca-Cola, and a big fat pickle. The Dirty Work episode returns in just a moment. Stay tuned.

• 38:03Glynn Washington?

  You know, when you want a snack, something salty and sweet, but you're not supposed to be eating snacks, supposed to be eating celery and carrots and other things that taste like cardboard, well, Kachava's got the nutrition your body craves in one deliciously simple shake. Let me tell you what I love. Kachava's new salted caramel flavor. You've got your sweet, you've got your salty, you've got your nutrition, all at the same time. And if you want variety, they've got chocolate, vanilla, chai, matcha, strawberry, coffee, cinnamon French toast. What? Cinnamon French toast? Give in and embrace your salty side.

• 38:46Glynn Washington?

  Go to kachava.com and use code JUDGMENT for 15% off your first order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A, dot com, code JUDGMENT.

• 39:01Glynn Washington?

  Okay, okay, it's almost, almost gift giving time. And because gift giving time is cold outside time, it's wanna stay by a fire time. I like giving something cozy. And nobody, but nobody does cozy like Quince. What's better than one for them, one for me? Or you? Like my Quince Organic Gods Dream Quilt Set paired with the Brush Cotton Sheet Set that I got for me, that I got for them, for me? Put it together, you've got cozy squared. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 39:44Glynn Washington?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. It's the best way to support the show. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Dirty Work episode. My name has been Washington and today, we're exploring those times in every life when you have to roll up your sleeves and do that which you do not wish to do. Our next story takes us back to the early 60s, small town Michigan, when Pete Fenton

• 40:24Glynn Washington?

  was a shy math whiz that all changed his senior year in school. Snap Judgment.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Pete was heading out of his favorite class, geometry, when the unthinkable happened. Jackie.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Tall, slicked back hair, junior, rat pack guy.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  Pulled him aside to talk business.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  He hands me a $20 bill and at the bottom was his phone number. 415. And he says, that's my business card. How would you like to have more money, more broads and more booze than you've ever had in your life? And God, it took me back because I hadn't had much of any of it.

• 41:11Speaker 06

  Listen, Pete, I want you, and you only, to help me start a Las Vegas-style casino in my basement. Are you with me? After a pause where a lot of stuff was going through my head, I said, "Yes."

• 41:26Speaker 05

  You see, Pete idolized Jackie. He may not have completely trusted him, but he had a girlfriend, drove a Thunderbird, and now, maybe he could taste some of that, too.

• 41:36Speaker 06

  Then, the meeting ends. He says, "Wait a minute. I'm low on business cards. Could you give me that one back, and I'll return it to you later?" Of course, being the $20 bill that he gave me. I gave it to him, never got it back.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  After school in Jackie's basement, Jackie would train Pete in the art of the con. Jackie's parents ran a traveling carnival, and Jackie ran the games. So he showed Pete his marked blackjack cards, loaded dice, a modified craps table, and Pete soaked it up.

• 42:08Speaker 06

  Opening night, they start trickling in early on. By midnight, it was just packed. Everybody was there, the football players, all the cool kids who wouldn't have anything to do with me before, and we're supplying them with free drinks. I was on the other side of the table, they maybe never gambled before in their lives. That was just, wow. All I've got to do is stand there and take in the money.

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Like the jocks. Oh, boy, I loved taking their money. But other people that I'd been friendly with, I felt guilty about taking the money from them.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  But a business is a business, right? And they were pulling in hundreds of dollars a night. Also for Pete, the best part of the casino came after the casino, when they would just be normal guys and hang out.

• 42:54Speaker 06

  We'd watch monster movies. We'd joke about them, which, of course, we thought the jokes we were making were the best ever. Jackie had a couple of pinball machines. One of them didn't work. He opened it up, and it was filled with girly magazines. So we'd browse through those. What brought us really together is that we both had a wound. Jackie, his mother, would yell at him from the moment he walked in to the moment he left. His father never said a word to Jackie, or anyone else, or his wife. On the other hand, my father was an alcoholic, my mother was for many years, and we bounded over that, even though we never spoke of it. The relationship I had with Jackie was we were best friends and it seemed like

• 43:38Speaker 06

  he considered it the same way.

• 43:41Speaker 05

  Then, one day, a week before graduation, Jackie came to me and said, "The casino, it's over. We're done."

• 43:47Speaker 06

  I said, "Why? We're doing really well." He said, "You know what? This is good, but I got something better. You know that I work on the carnival. I want you to come along with me. Would you be willing to do it?" This time, I didn't have any kind of qualms about it whatsoever. Yes.

• 44:05Speaker 05

  So after graduation, the boys hit the road with the carnival. And to Pete, it felt like freedom.

• 44:13Speaker 06

  What I enjoyed most about being a carny was the atmosphere. All the colored lights at night, smells of the cotton candy, shrieking rides, each of which had its own music system. And it all kind of melded together in just some sort of sensory overload. So I had that adrenaline rush every day.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  As hard as it is to believe, I was like a visiting rock star. Girls would come up to you just because you were a carny. They were enthralled by you. You know, it was exciting that a celebrity actually wanted to go out on a date with them. Plus, I was being paid $25 a day, very, very respectable for the time.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Jackie also showed Pete how to run the games, like the duck pond and the cat rack. And every booth Pete manned was rigged. Like in the cat rack, the game where you knock down the cats with the ball. Well, Pete controlled the cats with a secret lever by his foot.

• 45:09Speaker 06

  They're so excited by the fact that they're almost winning this big prize. They don't pay attention to anything. Nobody in the whole history of the time I was doing this ever figured it out.

• 45:21Speaker 06

  At first, I had a few qualms about it. But then, I would be able to impress the person who was important to me. And so, to be honest, it didn't bother me.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  After each day of ripping off customers, the boys would hang out in Jackie's airstream trailer and count their dough. Then Jackie would take Pete to the local town and introduce him to the world of the senses.

• 45:46Speaker 06

  I had my first sip of alcohol with him. I started smoking cigarettes, put them in my mouth and pretended to smoke. Good music, all of the Motown artists. I had my first sexual involvement with a lady of the night. So it wasn't romantic, but at least I got that out of the way.

• 46:09Speaker 06

  Everything was going fine until one of the veteran carnies talked to me and he asked me to go down and buy a couple of six packs and he'd pay me back. And I said, "I don't have the money to buy the six packs." He says, "You've got to be kidding me. The game you're working on, you should be rolling in the money." And I said, "No, I'm only making $25 a day on this." And he said, "No, you're supposed to be getting 10% of the total take every day."

• 46:33Speaker 05

  10%? That would be like hundreds of dollars.

• 46:37Speaker 06

  Wait, are you kidding me? I'm Jackie's buddy. Of course he's giving me the right things. He says, "No." The guy said, "The veteran carnies deal with that as we HO." You hold out the amount of money that's warranted from working that game. It was an eye-opener. I was still buddies with Jackie. We were still getting along great, but I started HOing. No more and no less than 10% of the money. At first, I felt guilty about HOing, which was weird because here I am essentially stealing money from the people who walk down the midway. But I felt guilty about doing it with a friend of mine. Eventually, I just couldn't HO anymore. So I went up to Jackie and told him I knew what was going on.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  And he said, "Pete, I've got a business here. I really can't afford to pay you the full amount right now. For one thing, because I don't have the cash flow. And secondly, you're a new guy.

• 47:34Speaker 06

  I'm giving you the opportunity to do this. So how about this as an alternative? I'll pay you the correct percentage, but I will give you the fair percentage when the season is done. It's going to be like a year-end bonus." So, you know, he's been my buddy and I said, "Okay, fine. Year-end bonus, that's good."

• 47:57Speaker 05

  Over the summer, Pete became the top dog carny, Jackie's right and left-hand man.

• 48:03Speaker 06

  But there was still a fly in the ointment, and that was that Jackie had promised that he was gonna give me this bonus at the end of the summer.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  So on the second-to-last day of summer, Pete hosted a kickback at his motel room with Jackie and some guys, including a carny who went by Fireman. There, he finally asked Jackie,

• 48:21Speaker 06

  "What about my bonus?" The fireman speaks first and he says, "Bonus? Nobody ever gives somebody a bonus at the end of the year. That's a bunch of baloney." And I said, "Come on, Jackie. You know, we talked about it. You know this." And Jackie said, "You know, he just won't respond." "Here we go," I realized. "Okay, there isn't gonna be any bonus at the end of the year. This has been all a bunch of crap." Finally, after a long back and forth, we settled on something that I had never heard of before: the Indiana Bust-Out.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  The Indiana Bust-Out is an ancient carny tradition. Over the course of one day, the boys would go head-to-head in every booth, using every carny trick up their sleeve, to pulling customers and get that money. The bet was double or nothing. The fireman would total up their earnings at the end, and if Jackie won, Pete got nothing. But if Pete won, Pete would get the bonus doubled.

• 49:16Speaker 06

  It was hard to sleep that night, and I woke up that following morning, took a shower, put on my coolest suit.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  Jackie and Pete lined up at the first booth to begin the bust-out, while the other carnies took bets. And with the ring of the cowbell, the Indiana Bust-Out was on.

• 49:34Speaker 06

  Hey, hey, guys. Yeah, you three guys over there. Come here. I know the winning duck is in there. These things just don't fly away. They're made out of plastic.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  So right over here. The winning duck is right over here.

• 49:41Speaker 06

  Oh, man, I'm so close. I can't believe it.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  No, I'm sorry.

• 49:44Speaker 06

  On the corner, yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Five for three, and the fourth one's free.

• 49:46Speaker 06

  It's just a little too soft. You gotta...

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Oh! All right, sir, how we doing today?

• 49:49Speaker 06

  Lob it up there.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Right, ready?

• 49:51Speaker 06

  There you go. Oh!

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Go ahead. Forget about Pete. I'll cut you a better deal.

• 49:56Speaker 06

  I'm sweating at the corner of the eye. It seems like he's doing better than me. There were some of the games that I had never worked before. When I'm doing this, I'm kind of reviewing the arc of the relationship. From the first time that we met to the casino, to him helping me out and me learning that he was screwing me. I wondered, had we ever really been friends? Or was I simply a really good employee?

• 50:21Speaker 05

  Usually I don't lose.

• 50:21Speaker 06

  I'm trying to give away every prize before I quit. You just came by at the right time. Boss would come in a few years, but give me a dollar, I'll give you two out of three in a few years.

• 50:36Speaker 06

  So that's it, we're done. We walk over to Jackie's trailer, we break out some drinks.

• 50:43Speaker 06

  It took a long while to count the money.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  Then finally, the fireman says, "Okay, here you go. Jackie, you brought in 2,183 bucks." Wow, I said, "Ooh, that's a lot." The fireman turns to me and says, "Okay, Pete, I hate to tell you this, but you won 2,586. You win."

• 51:10Speaker 06

  What? Because he started out with, "I hate to tell you this," I didn't grasp that I had won. Jackie was ticked off, he took off. It was quite a moment because I had just beaten him, but I have a little bit of secret. I had paid the fireman ahead of time to miscount me into winning more money than Jackie.

• 51:35Speaker 06

  Then the fireman said, "Listen, Jackie won playing this thing fair and square, but that doesn't matter. You won playing it the 100% Carney way. Jackie never thought of that, so you are the true Carney. You won."

• 51:50Speaker 06

  For the first time that summer, Jackie and I didn't get together in his airstream, and this was the last day.

• 51:56Speaker 05

  So Pete packed up his stuff and rolled out. He rode his motorcycle to the nearest bar to grab a drink, and that's when he saw...

• 52:05Speaker 06

  Jackie. I couldn't believe it. I don't know what's going to happen when I go over to him, but I decide that I've got to do it.

• 52:15Speaker 06

  He looks at me and he says, "Man, you did well. I thought it wouldn't be close." I had kind of a winner's remorse that I'd beaten the only guy that I looked up to. Jackie says, "I have to be honest with you." You know, we never talk much about our feelings, but I've had it with this carnival business.

• 52:36Speaker 06

  I was raised in a ticket booth. My mom tried to make me a profit center from practically the day that I came out of her womb, for which she never stopped blaming me. I grew up not trusting anyone. Everybody I knew was a puke, who was out to take you for anything they could. This is the kind of environment I grew up in, and I don't want to be in that. I want normal. I'm going to business school and leave this all behind. That was kind of stunning, you know, he'd never really been open with me in that way before. Then he says to me, "You know what? I always knew that you were stealing money from me. Don't worry about it."

• 53:19Speaker 06

  "Wait a minute, if you knew, why didn't you fire me?" He says, "You know, all of the guys, every carnival's out, but I figured that because you were my friend, you would steal less than the other people because you would feel guilt." And I was right. You were relatively honest. You stole less from me than the other guys, so it kind of evened out. I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand, he was acknowledging that I was relatively honest person, but then on the other hand, there was kind of a rupture there. I had learned everything I could from Jackie, and he had gotten what he needed out of me, which may be a friend or quasi-friend. So we said our goodbyes at that point.

• 54:02Speaker 06

  I rode my motorcycle off. And it was like I was walking off into the... I didn't know whether it was a sunset or a sunrise.

• 54:27Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Pete Fenton for sharing that story with Snap. Now, after that summer, Jackie quit his family's traveling carnival and went on to business school. To learn more about being a first-class hugster, check out Pete's book, Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist, with a link on our website, snapjudgment.org. Original sound design for that story was by Leon Morimoto and Davy Kim. It was produced by Davy, triple threat, Kim.

• 55:01Glynn Washington?

  Snap-ers, if you missed even a moment, know that an entire world of Snap Judgment storytelling awaits on the Snap Judgment Podcast, including Snap's entire A Tiny Plot series, the story of one group's journey to find a place called home. Snap Judgment's secret fortress of solitude is hidden within the bowels of KQED in San Francisco. No Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Snap. The union represents producers, artists, editors, and engineers. Our members are the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51.

• 55:43Glynn Washington?

  Snap is brought to you by the team that always goes the extra mile. Except, of course, for the uber-producer, it's Mark Ristich. Mark might get you an extra kilometer because he's all continental and everything.

• 55:59Glynn Washington?

  Now, there's Nancy Lopez, there's Pat Massey-Miller, there's Anna Sussman, Renzo Gorio, John Facio, Shayna Shealy, Taylor DeCott, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, David Exame, and Regina Bediako. And this is not the news. No way this is the news. In fact, you could be working away, under the hood of a car like they do in the movies, in some city slicker could roll in with his clean white shirt and sneer, "Hey, look here, you're doing it all wrong." And you could have a point because you don't, in fact, know what your end of a wrench to hold or how you ended up under an Oldsmobile,

• 56:39Glynn Washington?

  but even then, you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.