McCracken King Poston Jr. is a Georgia and Tennessee criminal defense attorney, former state legislator, and author of
Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, published by Citadel Books/Kensington Publishing in 2024.
Born and raised in Northwest Georgia’s Catoosa County, Poston has deep personal ties to the community where the extraordinary story of Alvin “The Zenith Man” Ridley unfolded. His connection to the people, places, and history of the region gives him a unique perspective on one of the most remarkable criminal cases in Georgia.
Poston is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law, where he served as president of his graduating class. Before entering private practice, he served as an Assistant District Attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit.
His career has extended well beyond the courtroom. Poston served four terms in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1989 to 1997. Throughout his legal career, he has handled numerous high-profile and nationally recognized criminal cases.
His cases and legal work have received national television coverage, including appearances and features on CNN Presents, Dateline NBC, A&E’s American Justice, Forensic Files, Extra, and NPR's Snap Judgment.
But perhaps no case has defined Poston's career more profoundly than his 1999 defense of Alvin "The Zenith Man" Ridley. The State of Georgia accused Ridley, a longtime television repairman in Ringgold, Georgia, of murdering his wife after decades of keeping her captive in the basement of their old home. Poston represented Ridley in his highly publicized murder trial and, through amazing turns of events, luck, and maybe divine intervention, helped secure his acquittal on all charges. And the town learned the shocking truth of what really happened in that old house on Inman Street.
The case would remain with Poston long after the trial ended. Decades later, he revisited the case and the people behind the headlines in his 2024 book,
Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom. More than a true-crime account, the book explores questions of justice, family, community, love, redemption, and the search for truth behind a story that captivated Catoosa County and the nation.
Through his decades of experience as a criminal defense attorney, legislator, and judge—and through his firsthand involvement in one of Northwest Georgia’s most extraordinary criminal cases—Poston brings a rare perspective to the story of the Zenith Man.
