October 18, 2023 • 32 mins
Burden of Guilt has been turned into a docuseries, now streaming only on Paramount+. Available to watch HERE!
And make sure to binge all episodes of the podcast that inspired the show before you watch!
Tracyraquel was always unsure how her baby brother died. When she finally got access to the official medical report, it felt suspicious and incomplete. But the more questions she asked, the more people dismissed her...except for one person. His shocking revelation and a simple lesson in physics pushed Tracyraquel to get law enforcement involved. Together, they’d go to war to expose the truth.
If you would like to reach out to the Burden of Guilt Team, email us at burdenofguiltpod@gmail.com
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, please reach out and call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
To report a case of child abuse, please contact your local police department or call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1.800.422.4453.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi all, we have some exciting news to share. Paramount
Plus has turned Burden of Guilt into a docuseries. You
will get to meet the people involved, you'll hear from
the people who have never spoken before, and you get
to see where the story took place. We are so
proud and excited to share it with you. You can
(00:20):
stream it right now on Paramount Plus. Tracy Mquel Burns
is a woman who is sharing her incredible life story
for the first time. When she was just two, her
four month old brother, Matthew died. The authorities were told
she had killed him. She has spent decades trying to
(00:44):
get justice for her brother and safety for her family.
In the last episode, we told you about her baby
brother's death and how she says she suffered abuse at
the hands of her father Jan Barry Sandlin and her
mother Almona. I'm Nancy Glass. This is Burden of Guilt
(01:09):
Episode two Physics. At the end of episode one, I
told you about Tracy Raquel's suicide attempt at the age
of fourteen. She had saved up a month's worth of
prescription anti seizure medication and swallowed it all at once.
She wanted out of her home out of her life,
(01:31):
a life of abuse and instability. But it didn't work.
She woke up with her mother, Kathy Almond, shaking her
and asking her, what have you done now? As a mother,
I can't even imagine having a reaction like that. When
Tracy Riquel woke up, she thought, I can't believe I'm
(01:53):
still here. Surviving the overdose offered Tracy Raquel a renewed
sense of purpose. Thought she had to survive for a reason,
and that was to find out what really happened to
her baby brother, Matthew. But the reality was, despite everything,
she was still just a teenager trying to have an
(02:15):
ordinary high school life. Tell me about these pictures in
front of us.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
This is a picture of me being a cheerleader. It's
the eighties, so blue eyeliner, but yeah, I guess it's cute.
And by the way, let me just say, I know
cheerleaders today do not understand. Those pom poms weighed like
ten pounds each and if they got wet, it was
fifteen so it was work.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, they were huge. There's a lovely photo of her
in a blue cheerleading uniform. A muscular young man is
holding her in the air as she balances on one foot.
Her arms are outstretched in theeed for victory. She's smiling, beautiful,
and proud. This is where she shined in school and sports.
(02:57):
It was her salvation, fine her successes outside of the house.
Her mother, Kathy, saw her failed suicide attempt as an opportunity.
She used it to identify her daughter as a danger
to herself for someone else. Then she leveraged it to
commit her.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
She woke me in the middle of the night and
took me to a state hospital. You know, I have
to wonder did she tell him I was a homicidal
I was a threat.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Look, it might seem reasonable to take a troubled child
who has made a suicide attempt to a psychiatric hospital,
but it's what Kathy told the staff that is so outrageous.
Did you ever find out how she was able to
commit you at the facility?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What I learned later in life was that Kathy had
told psychiatric professionals that I had been suicidal and homicidal
because I had killed my baby brother, and that I
had never been right. Since I don't understand, I don't understand.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
The hospital was not a safe place for healing. It
was scary as hell.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They were sick kids, they were violet criminals. It was
a very violet, scary, terrified place.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Were you able to grasp the situation you were in?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I had no clue and I didn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
How were you able to get out?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It was my aunt June, who came and said this
is not going to work and it was wrong, and
took care of me.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Tracy Riquel says she felt like she couldn't depend on
Kathy for even the most basic parenting.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
When I was eleven, someone gave me a polaroid camera
for Christmas, and this little girl and I were friends.
We were talking about getting all dressed up and doing
hair and whatever little girls do. Oh, we can take
pictures because I've got this polaroid camera. I looked everywhere
I couldn't find it, wasn't where it normally was. And
(05:18):
then I did find it in her bedroom closet, opened
it up, and inside were just horrible sexual pictures of
your mother that you shouldn't see, especially not with a
little girl from down the street.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Kathy wasn't contrite or embarrassed by it. She was annoyed
with Tracy Riquel there were many dark moments with Kathy.
Tracy Riqul's only respite was on June. Kathy's sister June
had a knack for showing up at the right time
and showing Tracy Riquel she could experience joy. Tell me
(05:56):
about your Aunt June.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We were always together when I was a child. She
was a little bit of reprieve. She would come and
get me and we'd go on trips together, and she
would take me places, and you know, so she was
this little bit of inspiration that there was something else
out there.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
It was Aunt June who gave Tracy Riquel her first job.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
She owned a hair salon in Atlanta. I started working
at this hair salon on Fridays and Saturdays in the
summer when I was like nine years old, sweeping floors
for five or ten dollars a day.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
When Tracy Riquel started high school, the salon became a
real job with more hours and responsibility. June wanted to
put her on the payroll.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
So I was fourteen and needed a Social Security card.
Growing up, my name had always been Tracy Sandlin, which
is Jan's last name. That's when Kathy had to say, well, actually,
your name isn't Tracy Sandlin, It's Golder, and Jan isn't
your father, but it's really not because it really is him.
(07:06):
But that's what we had to I mean, all of
this stuff just came spelling it like, wait.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
What Ted Golder was Kathy's first husband. Racy Riquel was
born while Kathy was still married to him, but Kathy
had been having an affair with Jan during the entire marriage.
So your legal name was Tracy Golder on your birth certificate,
but your biological dad was actually Jan Sandlin and you
(07:33):
didn't find this out until you needed to have papers
in order to work and make money. Yes, what did
you decide to do about your last name?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I was fourteen and sat in front of a judge
and he said, well, what name do you want? Well,
Ted Golder?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
She did not want Jan's last name, and Tercy Riquel
liked to be connected to Matthew in whatever way she
could be, and her baby brother's last name was Golder.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I don't know who that is, but he's a Vietnam
Vette and it's Matthew's name, and I definitely don't want Jan's.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Eventually, Kathy, Jason, and Tracy Riquel settled into an apartment.
It was the first consistent home. She remembers.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I was a sophomore in high school, and the only
reason that we were stable then was because we were
in HUD housing.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
HUD housing is housing and urban development. It's low income
public housing.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
What was it like, this tiny, little bitty apartment complex
surrounded by trees so that nobody on the outside could
actually see what was inside.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
When Tracy Riquel was younger, she had been beaten for
asking questions about Matthew's death. But as you heard in
episode one, her father Jan was incarcerated for arm robbery
when she was ten, so now she felt safe asking
more questions about the issue that haunted her. How did
her baby brother died? What did you grow up thinking?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
I didn't believe that it was an accident.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Tracy Raquel had her suspicions, after all, she grew up
in a household where abuse was the norm, even when
she was a small child.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
There was one specific time, have to be under the
age of four. He was in the shower and he
called me to come and get his cigarette, the camel cigarette,
and told me to take it to Kathy. I didn't
(09:37):
know what to do with the cigarette.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So what did you do?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I just kind of stood there and then he put
that camel cigarette out on me. That was the very
first time that he punished me for not doing whatever
he asked me to do.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That is a terrifying memory, and Tracy Raquel has a
lot of those when it comes to her childhood. I
wanted to hear what Kathy Alman had to say about
the situation, so I went to see her.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I really can't get drawn into Tracy's fantasies anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
She has been lying in torturing me for thirty years.
I can't take it anymore. What do you mean, Kathy,
What is she lying about everything? Kathy wasn't interested in
having a conversation, but she did send her sister, Sheila,
who lives with her, to come and talk to me.
Tracy was not abused. She was spanked one time in
(10:44):
her life when she was.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
In elementary school and Kathy called her smoking cigarettes in
the bathroom and she spanked her.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
She was not abused. She was a very happy child.
Sheila might have strong opinions about Racy Raquel's childhood, but
she can't claim a lot of firsthand knowledge. Sheila spent
a lot of time incarcerated during Tracy Riquel's youth. Her
crimes included fraud, robbery, driving under the influence, and narcotics charges.
(11:24):
Tracy Riquel became a teenager with a mission. It was
if her brother Matthew was with her beside her asking
her to find out what happened the day he died.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
There was a lot of pushback, so I would only
do a little bit of research, and I would ask
questions from everybody in my family until they would be like, okay,
enough enough.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
She would need access to investigators and files that would
be difficult for a kid to get her hands on.
But having a stable household for the first time had
allowed Tracy Roquel to stay at one school and even
make friends.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We were all athletes and I had a really great
friend who was my neighbor. Everybody been and around Atlanta
knew Ryan Fleming, and he was just a great guy.
We were buddies. He played football for the high school.
It was all star and he just kind of my
support system.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
But he offered more than just moral support. Ryan's family
had connections in the police department. Tell me about how
much he helped you.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Ryan went with me down to Decab County Police Department.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
What were you guys trying to find?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I wanted to see the pump side report, you know,
what was his cause of death? I just assumed it
was a homicide. And I'm fifteen. I thought I was crazy.
They gave me an incident report. There was no investigation,
nobody had ever done anything.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
What did it say?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
The incident report said that he suffered a head injury,
the ambulances coming, they're taking him to the hospital, and
that's all. So that's when it really opened all up.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
She is only fifteen and she finally has this document
in her hand, so of course she studied it carefully,
and she found the lack of information suspicious. A baby
had died and there was practically no information. That was
not a typical situation. It was a lot more digging
to do, but she was a teenager and there was
(13:25):
also school and sports. Before she could completely immerse herself
into the investigation of Matthew's death. Tracy graduated from high
school and then her first thought was she needed to
get out of Kathy's house, where she felt like there
was no safety or protection.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I lived with Kathy until I was eighteen, and I
moved out on my own and had this little apartment
up on the lake and worked four jobs, just trying
to be away. I was terrified. I'm scared of everything
all the time. I never slept. I still don't really sleep.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Building herself up into a physically strong person, someone who
would be able to defend herself. That's why the military
appealed to her.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I needed to get out of where I was. I thought,
I'm going to go in the Army. I'm going to
go to ranger school, jump out of airplane, and I'm
going to learn all these skills that are going to
make me super tough and no one can never hurt me.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Tercy Mquel had just seen Top Gun, you know, the
first one.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I feel the need need first feed.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Some people wanted to date Tom Cruise. She wanted to
be Tom Cruise. How did you like the military?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Basic training was hard, a lot of sleep deprivation, all
that drilling, ceremony, following rules and getting up at different
times a day and all of that. But it really
sort of clicked in a way. I was stationed overseas,
so I was learning who I was. Came back home
and and found out that Jan was going to come
(15:03):
up for parole.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Jan was serving life in prison for a crime he
committed in Florida, So how long had he been away At.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
That point He had done fifteen years for an armed robbery,
so it seemed reasonable that he might get out. And
that's where I think the fear really hit.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
What was your fear?
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It was just this terrifying thing that he was going
to get out of jail and he was going to
come and kill me. And I just couldn't what happened.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So you thought he would kill you.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
It was a very realistic thought at the time. I
thought he was a danger to me. He was a
danger to Kathy. He was a danger to my brother Jason.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
If you think that sounds extreme or paranoid, consider this.
Jan Barry Sandlin had terrorized her as a child. Elt
Another incident Tracy Raquel shared was so painful she could
barely get out the details through tears. Here's what she shared.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's really hard to sit here to all this and
then think there's not something wrong with you.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
It's so embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
What was embarrassing?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Roaches and butter.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
On toast.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
That was a form of punishment from Jan.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
He made you eat that to punish you.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yeah, gosh, I'm like a basket case. Like I don't
know how many what could think he could be Like, Okay,
some of this style, it's ridiculously.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I might as well just do my best to get
it all out there.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I have to tell you. My heart broke as she cried.
This isn't a revelation. I don't think she's ever spoken
about before. Her father forced her to eat bugs on
toast his punishment, and yet she carries the weight of
shame and embarrassment. There were no limits to his cruelty
and depravity Outside of the home. There were whispers into
(17:18):
Cab County about Jan being part of a ruthless organized
crime group. He was sentenced to a long prison term
for a crime he was caught committing, but were their
crimes he had never been prosecuted for. At this point,
she was an adult. Tracy Riquel had married while serving
in the army and had two very young children of
(17:39):
her own. When she was a child, Jan had beaten
her for asking to visit her brother Matthew's grave. So
how would he respond to finding out that she was
now investigating his death.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I'm trying to figure out what happened to Matthew. He's
going to get out of jail. Do you know how
much harder it's going to be out of chaos that
came with him. It's a Category five hurricane. It's unpredictable.
It's literally a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
You were on a mission.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You just couldn't get out of jail. So everything just expedited,
and I just worked harder, made more calls, reached out
to more people.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
But here's the problem. When Tracy Riquel tried to bring
attention to the circumstances around her baby brother Matthew's death,
law enforcement into Cab County, Georgia wasn't interested.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
For years, I had called the Cab County Police Department
and I always got the run around or was hung
up on. You know, it's a cold case, it's an
old case. They didn't have time. I had to call
a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
How did you not give up?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I had a friend whose uncle was in the FBI
at the time, who, you know, talked to me, just
keep doing what you're doing. You got to keep sending
letters and you got to keep calling to you get
somebody different, you know, And I did.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
And then something remarkable happened. Tracy Raquel reached investigator Jim Maybe.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I am a thirty year retired law enforcement officer. I
spent most of my career in uniform division, and he
got promoted to detective. I worked commicide for several years
and after that transferred over to the Medical Examiner's office.
Was a forensic death investigator. She had mentioned her father
was Jan Barry Sandlin. That shocked me. Before I came
(19:35):
to the Medical Examiner's office, I'd been assigned a cold
case file where a police officer had been killed about
the time that her baby brother had been killed, and
one of the people to interested in that police officer
death was Dan Salin. I couldn't believe that was her dead.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Jim Maybe had never encountered someone like Tracy Riquell before.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Wasn't some politician or someone of great important, just a
child that died. It's terrible, Yeah, but why would I
take it? But Tracy said some things that intrigued me.
She wasn't interested in money, baying, or fortune or anything
like that. She was simply wanting to know the truth
about what happened. Well, one of the manto's that we
(20:19):
have in the Medical Examiner's office, it isn't justice that
we see it's true, so justice can be served.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
What was your first meeting with Jim Maybe?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Like he said he would help, and we talked for
a couple of hours.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
During that conversation, Jim Maybe asked Tracy Raquel to put
everything she knew in writing, and he thought he might
never hear from her again because in his experience, that's
how things went.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
She typed out a two three page letter of everything
that she could remember that occurred the day that Matthew died,
and I started to read it and investigate it.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Now, only a parent can request access to their child's
medical records, and so for years, Tracy Raquel had asked
Kathy to get them from Decab and North Side Hospitals,
but Kathy refused.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
She tried to obtain records surrounding Matthew's death after her
mother really wouldn't discussion with her.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
That all changed when investigator Jim Mayde got involved.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
I go missed my mother to request records from the
Cab Medical.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
And so that's when it started. Early ninety three, the
medical records from the hospital came.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
You heard at the very beginning of this series about
this moment when Tracy Raquel first saw the records. Finally,
twenty two years after Matthew's death, she held the envelope
that would solve the mystery that had haunted her most
of her life.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
The cab General Hospital, December seventh, nineteen seventy one. Patient
name Matthew Stephen Golder. Skull X rays reveal extensive skull fracturing,
primarily on the left side. The clinical findings indicate massive
(22:13):
brain damage. The brain was markedly conduced and swollen. He
was felt to be terminal. Mother reports that the child
was thrown out of the crib by a two year
old sister and that she found him comatose.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
The report is shocking. What did you do after reading it?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I called my grandmother first and I asked her, do
you know this? Did you know that this says this?
What is this? And she said, very matter of fact,
not in a cruel way, and yes, we know this,
We've always known that.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Did you believe it?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
As a human being, you have a moment where you
have to ask the question, is it possible that I
killed my baby brother? There's this terrible thing to think
that someone said this about you, and then that people
had to wonder.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
On top of that, friends, neighbors, and people who knew
the family, like Jackie Wilson. They all heard the same thing.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Everyone was saying that Tracy had brought her brother out
of a bed.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I talked to Jan one time.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
He said that.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Tracy had a temper and that commed in the bed
and she threw it out.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It didn't make sense to me, but that was what
they said.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You went with it, Tracy Riqueal has heard different versions
of what happened to Matthew since she was a child.
It was chalked up to accidents. At one point, Kathy
even said Jan it but those were just stories. This
hospital report was in writing. Then Tercy Riquel called Kathy
(24:08):
hoping for some kind of explanation.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Once I got Kathy on the phone, she said she
never said that. I just wrote it down wrong. And
then she said, well, you know, it was an accident.
You picked him up and you dropped it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
She says she didn't say it. Then she says it
was an accident. I'm having a hard time making heads
or tails of your mother's response. What did you think?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I'm a person who I think just guilt and I
your friends, So yeah, I'm looking around trying to think, well,
is it possible? Is this the horrible secret that's been
going on?
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Is this why Matthew's name could never be mentioned out loud?
Is this why Jane beat her when she insisted on
visiting his grave because they held her responsible. Matthew was
in a coma and breathing erratically. It was all in
(25:05):
the hospital record, but there was more. Doctors examined his
entire body, and his physical state revealed evidence that her
brother had been a victim.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
There is an old, dry, ulcerated area over the mid
left medial surface of the left foot. There are old,
dark purple colored areas of echamosis and bruising in the
left periclavical region.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
There was a level of abuse that Matthew had been
through as a four month old child. He had a
third degree burn on the step of one of his
little feet. He had what looked like an old fracture
to his clavical He had brazing on his body.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
How exactly would a two year old break and bruise
Matthew's clavicle or burn his foot. Then something happened that
would dramatically change everything, and ironically, it was something her
little daughter, Goldie.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Did Goldie was getting close to too. We had brought
groceries in and there was a gallon of milk sitting
in front of the door, and she was trying to
lift this gallon of milk to get it in the kitchen,
and she could not even drag it. And it's like
a light went off.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It occurred to me that she can't even drag this
gallon of milk, much less pick it up. How was
it that I, you know, four months old, picked this
infant up, lifted him over the side of a crib
and threw him on to a floor. That wasn't a possibility.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
The weight of one gallon of milk is just about
eight and a half pounds. According to the medical records,
Matthew's weight was just under fifteen pounds. Goldie had unwittingly
given Tracy Riquel a simple physics lesson.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
There was this epiphany watching her and realizing, I know
that that can't happen that way. I know that's not possible.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
But even still, Tracy Raquel wouldn't just trust her own intuition.
She sought out the opinion of.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Experts, had multiple appointments with neurologists and pediatricians and pathologists
just in Savannah alone to explain, is this possible?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
So did anyone tell you it was?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
No one ever said that. No, they said no, it's
not physically possible.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Finally, emboldened, she called anyone and everyone who was there
the night Matthew died at Decab Medical Center.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
I just basically went down a list of people I
could call and just called everybody. Most people didn't want
to talk to me, and he did.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
It was Butch, her father, Jan's older brother. The Sanlin
family didn't have a reputation for nothing. Though his rap
sheet didn't match Jan's. Butch had been busted for shoplifting, trespassing, firearms,
and driving offences. But he did have a soft spot
for his niece.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Butch was a kind of terrifying man when I was
a child, Mister Georgia, mister all Southeastern Bodybuilders. It was
a really big, huge man, but he was always kind.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
What did he say happened?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
He didn't know the details exactly, but he said he
knew that they were responsible, that they had planned this,
and that they were going to blame it on me.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's really shocking. He told you that this was the
plan all along that Jan and Kathy wanted to kill
the baby. How did he know that?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
He said, I arrived at the emergency room and you
were sitting on a concrete slab where ambulances pull up,
and they were, you know, football field away in the
parking lot, discussing there, you know, their story and how
they were going to get this together. He said. He
walked up and he grabbed Jan and said, what have
you done? What have you done?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
How did Jim reply to that?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
He said he didn't have a response. That was it,
And so I think that I was the scapegoat.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
They put the blame on Tracy Riquel, but they didn't
say it was intentional. The easiest thing was to say
it was an accident. The truth is that Jan and
Kathy met little resistance. Think about it. Each person who
had their hands and eyes on Matthew neglected to take
any action. The staff and two hospitals had seen this
(29:45):
child and examined him. They wrote about his injuries, even
the old ones that showed clear signs of abuse. The
doctors saw it, they knew. The coroner signed off on it.
The police didn't ask any questions. Everyone just went along
with the story.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Nobody had to do any work. Nobody had to be
responsible or held accountable.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
But that was about to end. Tracy Riquel was a
soldier and she knew it was time to go to
war on the next Burden of Guilt.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
According to the Georgia Death Investigation Act, anytime a child
dies like that at autopsy has to be done. I
kept thinking about Sola, Well, how did the coroner sign
it out as an accidental lift?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Stay tuned for Burden of Guilt, the documentary coming in
twenty twenty four and airing only on Paramount Plus. If
you would like to reach out to the Burden of
Guilt team, email us at Burden of guiltpod at gmail
dot com. That's Burden of Guilt pod at gmail dot com.
(30:56):
If you or someone you know is worried about maltreatment
or suspec the fact that a child is being abused
or neglected, call the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline.
You can call or text one eight hundred four a child.
That's one eight hundred four two two four four five three.
(31:18):
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Burden of Guilt. Five star reviews go a long Way.
A big thank you to all of you who are listening,
and also be sure to check us out and follow
us on Instagram at Glass Podcasts. Burden of Guilt is
(31:40):
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and
executive produced by me Nancy Glass, written and produced by
Carrie Hartman and Andrea Gunning, also produced by Ben Fetterman
and associate producer Kristin Melchor. Our iHeart team is Ali
(32:03):
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special thanks to Tracy Riquel Burns
and her husband Bart. Voice acting in this episode was
performed by Trey Morgan. Audio editing and mixing by Matt
del Vecchio. Burden of Guild's theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Music library provided by my Music And For more podcasts
(32:26):
from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Hi all, we have some exciting news to share. Paramount
Plus has turned Burden of Guilt into a docuseries. You
will get to meet the people involved, you'll hear from
the people who have never spoken before, and you get
to see where the story took place. We are so
proud and excited to share it with you. You can
(00:20):
stream it right now on Paramount Plus. Tracy Mquel Burns
is a woman who is sharing her incredible life story
for the first time. When she was just two, her
four month old brother, Matthew died. The authorities were told
she had killed him. She has spent decades trying to
(00:44):
get justice for her brother and safety for her family.
In the last episode, we told you about her baby
brother's death and how she says she suffered abuse at
the hands of her father Jan Barry Sandlin and her
mother Almona. I'm Nancy Glass. This is Burden of Guilt
(01:09):
Episode two Physics. At the end of episode one, I
told you about Tracy Raquel's suicide attempt at the age
of fourteen. She had saved up a month's worth of
prescription anti seizure medication and swallowed it all at once.
She wanted out of her home out of her life,
(01:31):
a life of abuse and instability. But it didn't work.
She woke up with her mother, Kathy Almond, shaking her
and asking her, what have you done now? As a mother,
I can't even imagine having a reaction like that. When
Tracy Riquel woke up, she thought, I can't believe I'm
(01:53):
still here. Surviving the overdose offered Tracy Raquel a renewed
sense of purpose. Thought she had to survive for a reason,
and that was to find out what really happened to
her baby brother, Matthew. But the reality was, despite everything,
she was still just a teenager trying to have an
(02:15):
ordinary high school life. Tell me about these pictures in
front of us.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
This is a picture of me being a cheerleader. It's
the eighties, so blue eyeliner, but yeah, I guess it's cute.
And by the way, let me just say, I know
cheerleaders today do not understand. Those pom poms weighed like
ten pounds each and if they got wet, it was
fifteen so it was work.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, they were huge. There's a lovely photo of her
in a blue cheerleading uniform. A muscular young man is
holding her in the air as she balances on one foot.
Her arms are outstretched in theeed for victory. She's smiling, beautiful,
and proud. This is where she shined in school and sports.
(02:57):
It was her salvation, fine her successes outside of the house.
Her mother, Kathy, saw her failed suicide attempt as an opportunity.
She used it to identify her daughter as a danger
to herself for someone else. Then she leveraged it to
commit her.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
She woke me in the middle of the night and
took me to a state hospital. You know, I have
to wonder did she tell him I was a homicidal
I was a threat.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Look, it might seem reasonable to take a troubled child
who has made a suicide attempt to a psychiatric hospital,
but it's what Kathy told the staff that is so outrageous.
Did you ever find out how she was able to
commit you at the facility?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What I learned later in life was that Kathy had
told psychiatric professionals that I had been suicidal and homicidal
because I had killed my baby brother, and that I
had never been right. Since I don't understand, I don't understand.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
The hospital was not a safe place for healing. It
was scary as hell.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They were sick kids, they were violet criminals. It was
a very violet, scary, terrified place.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Were you able to grasp the situation you were in?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I had no clue and I didn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
How were you able to get out?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It was my aunt June, who came and said this
is not going to work and it was wrong, and
took care of me.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Tracy Riquel says she felt like she couldn't depend on
Kathy for even the most basic parenting.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
When I was eleven, someone gave me a polaroid camera
for Christmas, and this little girl and I were friends.
We were talking about getting all dressed up and doing
hair and whatever little girls do. Oh, we can take
pictures because I've got this polaroid camera. I looked everywhere
I couldn't find it, wasn't where it normally was. And
(05:18):
then I did find it in her bedroom closet, opened
it up, and inside were just horrible sexual pictures of
your mother that you shouldn't see, especially not with a
little girl from down the street.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Kathy wasn't contrite or embarrassed by it. She was annoyed
with Tracy Riquel there were many dark moments with Kathy.
Tracy Riqul's only respite was on June. Kathy's sister June
had a knack for showing up at the right time
and showing Tracy Riquel she could experience joy. Tell me
(05:56):
about your Aunt June.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We were always together when I was a child. She
was a little bit of reprieve. She would come and
get me and we'd go on trips together, and she
would take me places, and you know, so she was
this little bit of inspiration that there was something else
out there.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
It was Aunt June who gave Tracy Riquel her first job.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
She owned a hair salon in Atlanta. I started working
at this hair salon on Fridays and Saturdays in the
summer when I was like nine years old, sweeping floors
for five or ten dollars a day.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
When Tracy Riquel started high school, the salon became a
real job with more hours and responsibility. June wanted to
put her on the payroll.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
So I was fourteen and needed a Social Security card.
Growing up, my name had always been Tracy Sandlin, which
is Jan's last name. That's when Kathy had to say, well, actually,
your name isn't Tracy Sandlin, It's Golder, and Jan isn't
your father, but it's really not because it really is him.
(07:06):
But that's what we had to I mean, all of
this stuff just came spelling it like, wait.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
What Ted Golder was Kathy's first husband. Racy Riquel was
born while Kathy was still married to him, but Kathy
had been having an affair with Jan during the entire marriage.
So your legal name was Tracy Golder on your birth certificate,
but your biological dad was actually Jan Sandlin and you
(07:33):
didn't find this out until you needed to have papers
in order to work and make money. Yes, what did
you decide to do about your last name?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I was fourteen and sat in front of a judge
and he said, well, what name do you want? Well,
Ted Golder?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
She did not want Jan's last name, and Tercy Riquel
liked to be connected to Matthew in whatever way she
could be, and her baby brother's last name was Golder.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I don't know who that is, but he's a Vietnam
Vette and it's Matthew's name, and I definitely don't want Jan's.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Eventually, Kathy, Jason, and Tracy Riquel settled into an apartment.
It was the first consistent home. She remembers.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I was a sophomore in high school, and the only
reason that we were stable then was because we were
in HUD housing.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
HUD housing is housing and urban development. It's low income
public housing.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
What was it like, this tiny, little bitty apartment complex
surrounded by trees so that nobody on the outside could
actually see what was inside.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
When Tracy Riquel was younger, she had been beaten for
asking questions about Matthew's death. But as you heard in
episode one, her father Jan was incarcerated for arm robbery
when she was ten, so now she felt safe asking
more questions about the issue that haunted her. How did
her baby brother died? What did you grow up thinking?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
I didn't believe that it was an accident.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Tracy Raquel had her suspicions, after all, she grew up
in a household where abuse was the norm, even when
she was a small child.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
There was one specific time, have to be under the
age of four. He was in the shower and he
called me to come and get his cigarette, the camel cigarette,
and told me to take it to Kathy. I didn't
(09:37):
know what to do with the cigarette.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So what did you do?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I just kind of stood there and then he put
that camel cigarette out on me. That was the very
first time that he punished me for not doing whatever
he asked me to do.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That is a terrifying memory, and Tracy Raquel has a
lot of those when it comes to her childhood. I
wanted to hear what Kathy Alman had to say about
the situation, so I went to see her.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I really can't get drawn into Tracy's fantasies anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
She has been lying in torturing me for thirty years.
I can't take it anymore. What do you mean, Kathy,
What is she lying about everything? Kathy wasn't interested in
having a conversation, but she did send her sister, Sheila,
who lives with her, to come and talk to me.
Tracy was not abused. She was spanked one time in
(10:44):
her life when she was.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
In elementary school and Kathy called her smoking cigarettes in
the bathroom and she spanked her.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
She was not abused. She was a very happy child.
Sheila might have strong opinions about Racy Raquel's childhood, but
she can't claim a lot of firsthand knowledge. Sheila spent
a lot of time incarcerated during Tracy Riquel's youth. Her
crimes included fraud, robbery, driving under the influence, and narcotics charges.
(11:24):
Tracy Riquel became a teenager with a mission. It was
if her brother Matthew was with her beside her asking
her to find out what happened the day he died.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
There was a lot of pushback, so I would only
do a little bit of research, and I would ask
questions from everybody in my family until they would be like, okay,
enough enough.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
She would need access to investigators and files that would
be difficult for a kid to get her hands on.
But having a stable household for the first time had
allowed Tracy Roquel to stay at one school and even
make friends.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We were all athletes and I had a really great
friend who was my neighbor. Everybody been and around Atlanta
knew Ryan Fleming, and he was just a great guy.
We were buddies. He played football for the high school.
It was all star and he just kind of my
support system.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
But he offered more than just moral support. Ryan's family
had connections in the police department. Tell me about how
much he helped you.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Ryan went with me down to Decab County Police Department.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
What were you guys trying to find?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I wanted to see the pump side report, you know,
what was his cause of death? I just assumed it
was a homicide. And I'm fifteen. I thought I was crazy.
They gave me an incident report. There was no investigation,
nobody had ever done anything.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
What did it say?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
The incident report said that he suffered a head injury,
the ambulances coming, they're taking him to the hospital, and
that's all. So that's when it really opened all up.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
She is only fifteen and she finally has this document
in her hand, so of course she studied it carefully,
and she found the lack of information suspicious. A baby
had died and there was practically no information. That was
not a typical situation. It was a lot more digging
to do, but she was a teenager and there was
(13:25):
also school and sports. Before she could completely immerse herself
into the investigation of Matthew's death. Tracy graduated from high
school and then her first thought was she needed to
get out of Kathy's house, where she felt like there
was no safety or protection.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I lived with Kathy until I was eighteen, and I
moved out on my own and had this little apartment
up on the lake and worked four jobs, just trying
to be away. I was terrified. I'm scared of everything
all the time. I never slept. I still don't really sleep.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Building herself up into a physically strong person, someone who
would be able to defend herself. That's why the military
appealed to her.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I needed to get out of where I was. I thought,
I'm going to go in the Army. I'm going to
go to ranger school, jump out of airplane, and I'm
going to learn all these skills that are going to
make me super tough and no one can never hurt me.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Tercy Mquel had just seen Top Gun, you know, the
first one.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I feel the need need first feed.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Some people wanted to date Tom Cruise. She wanted to
be Tom Cruise. How did you like the military?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Basic training was hard, a lot of sleep deprivation, all
that drilling, ceremony, following rules and getting up at different
times a day and all of that. But it really
sort of clicked in a way. I was stationed overseas,
so I was learning who I was. Came back home
and and found out that Jan was going to come
(15:03):
up for parole.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Jan was serving life in prison for a crime he
committed in Florida, So how long had he been away At.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
That point He had done fifteen years for an armed robbery,
so it seemed reasonable that he might get out. And
that's where I think the fear really hit.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
What was your fear?
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It was just this terrifying thing that he was going
to get out of jail and he was going to
come and kill me. And I just couldn't what happened.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So you thought he would kill you.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
It was a very realistic thought at the time. I
thought he was a danger to me. He was a
danger to Kathy. He was a danger to my brother Jason.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
If you think that sounds extreme or paranoid, consider this.
Jan Barry Sandlin had terrorized her as a child. Elt
Another incident Tracy Raquel shared was so painful she could
barely get out the details through tears. Here's what she shared.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's really hard to sit here to all this and
then think there's not something wrong with you.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
It's so embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
What was embarrassing?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Roaches and butter.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
On toast.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
That was a form of punishment from Jan.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
He made you eat that to punish you.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yeah, gosh, I'm like a basket case. Like I don't
know how many what could think he could be Like, Okay,
some of this style, it's ridiculously.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I might as well just do my best to get
it all out there.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I have to tell you. My heart broke as she cried.
This isn't a revelation. I don't think she's ever spoken
about before. Her father forced her to eat bugs on
toast his punishment, and yet she carries the weight of
shame and embarrassment. There were no limits to his cruelty
and depravity Outside of the home. There were whispers into
(17:18):
Cab County about Jan being part of a ruthless organized
crime group. He was sentenced to a long prison term
for a crime he was caught committing, but were their
crimes he had never been prosecuted for. At this point,
she was an adult. Tracy Riquel had married while serving
in the army and had two very young children of
(17:39):
her own. When she was a child, Jan had beaten
her for asking to visit her brother Matthew's grave. So
how would he respond to finding out that she was
now investigating his death.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I'm trying to figure out what happened to Matthew. He's
going to get out of jail. Do you know how
much harder it's going to be out of chaos that
came with him. It's a Category five hurricane. It's unpredictable.
It's literally a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
You were on a mission.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You just couldn't get out of jail. So everything just expedited,
and I just worked harder, made more calls, reached out
to more people.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
But here's the problem. When Tracy Riquel tried to bring
attention to the circumstances around her baby brother Matthew's death,
law enforcement into Cab County, Georgia wasn't interested.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
For years, I had called the Cab County Police Department
and I always got the run around or was hung
up on. You know, it's a cold case, it's an
old case. They didn't have time. I had to call
a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
How did you not give up?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I had a friend whose uncle was in the FBI
at the time, who, you know, talked to me, just
keep doing what you're doing. You got to keep sending
letters and you got to keep calling to you get
somebody different, you know, And I did.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
And then something remarkable happened. Tracy Raquel reached investigator Jim Maybe.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I am a thirty year retired law enforcement officer. I
spent most of my career in uniform division, and he
got promoted to detective. I worked commicide for several years
and after that transferred over to the Medical Examiner's office.
Was a forensic death investigator. She had mentioned her father
was Jan Barry Sandlin. That shocked me. Before I came
(19:35):
to the Medical Examiner's office, I'd been assigned a cold
case file where a police officer had been killed about
the time that her baby brother had been killed, and
one of the people to interested in that police officer
death was Dan Salin. I couldn't believe that was her dead.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Jim Maybe had never encountered someone like Tracy Riquell before.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Wasn't some politician or someone of great important, just a
child that died. It's terrible, Yeah, but why would I
take it? But Tracy said some things that intrigued me.
She wasn't interested in money, baying, or fortune or anything
like that. She was simply wanting to know the truth
about what happened. Well, one of the manto's that we
(20:19):
have in the Medical Examiner's office, it isn't justice that
we see it's true, so justice can be served.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
What was your first meeting with Jim Maybe?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Like he said he would help, and we talked for
a couple of hours.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
During that conversation, Jim Maybe asked Tracy Raquel to put
everything she knew in writing, and he thought he might
never hear from her again because in his experience, that's
how things went.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
She typed out a two three page letter of everything
that she could remember that occurred the day that Matthew died,
and I started to read it and investigate it.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Now, only a parent can request access to their child's
medical records, and so for years, Tracy Raquel had asked
Kathy to get them from Decab and North Side Hospitals,
but Kathy refused.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
She tried to obtain records surrounding Matthew's death after her
mother really wouldn't discussion with her.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
That all changed when investigator Jim Mayde got involved.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
I go missed my mother to request records from the
Cab Medical.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
And so that's when it started. Early ninety three, the
medical records from the hospital came.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
You heard at the very beginning of this series about
this moment when Tracy Raquel first saw the records. Finally,
twenty two years after Matthew's death, she held the envelope
that would solve the mystery that had haunted her most
of her life.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
The cab General Hospital, December seventh, nineteen seventy one. Patient
name Matthew Stephen Golder. Skull X rays reveal extensive skull fracturing,
primarily on the left side. The clinical findings indicate massive
(22:13):
brain damage. The brain was markedly conduced and swollen. He
was felt to be terminal. Mother reports that the child
was thrown out of the crib by a two year
old sister and that she found him comatose.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
The report is shocking. What did you do after reading it?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I called my grandmother first and I asked her, do
you know this? Did you know that this says this?
What is this? And she said, very matter of fact,
not in a cruel way, and yes, we know this,
We've always known that.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Did you believe it?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
As a human being, you have a moment where you
have to ask the question, is it possible that I
killed my baby brother? There's this terrible thing to think
that someone said this about you, and then that people
had to wonder.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
On top of that, friends, neighbors, and people who knew
the family, like Jackie Wilson. They all heard the same thing.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Everyone was saying that Tracy had brought her brother out
of a bed.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I talked to Jan one time.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
He said that.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Tracy had a temper and that commed in the bed
and she threw it out.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It didn't make sense to me, but that was what
they said.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You went with it, Tracy Riqueal has heard different versions
of what happened to Matthew since she was a child.
It was chalked up to accidents. At one point, Kathy
even said Jan it but those were just stories. This
hospital report was in writing. Then Tercy Riquel called Kathy
(24:08):
hoping for some kind of explanation.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Once I got Kathy on the phone, she said she
never said that. I just wrote it down wrong. And
then she said, well, you know, it was an accident.
You picked him up and you dropped it.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
She says she didn't say it. Then she says it
was an accident. I'm having a hard time making heads
or tails of your mother's response. What did you think?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I'm a person who I think just guilt and I
your friends, So yeah, I'm looking around trying to think, well,
is it possible? Is this the horrible secret that's been
going on?
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Is this why Matthew's name could never be mentioned out loud?
Is this why Jane beat her when she insisted on
visiting his grave because they held her responsible. Matthew was
in a coma and breathing erratically. It was all in
(25:05):
the hospital record, but there was more. Doctors examined his
entire body, and his physical state revealed evidence that her
brother had been a victim.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
There is an old, dry, ulcerated area over the mid
left medial surface of the left foot. There are old,
dark purple colored areas of echamosis and bruising in the
left periclavical region.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
There was a level of abuse that Matthew had been
through as a four month old child. He had a
third degree burn on the step of one of his
little feet. He had what looked like an old fracture
to his clavical He had brazing on his body.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
How exactly would a two year old break and bruise
Matthew's clavicle or burn his foot. Then something happened that
would dramatically change everything, and ironically, it was something her
little daughter, Goldie.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Did Goldie was getting close to too. We had brought
groceries in and there was a gallon of milk sitting
in front of the door, and she was trying to
lift this gallon of milk to get it in the kitchen,
and she could not even drag it. And it's like
a light went off.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It occurred to me that she can't even drag this
gallon of milk, much less pick it up. How was
it that I, you know, four months old, picked this
infant up, lifted him over the side of a crib
and threw him on to a floor. That wasn't a possibility.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
The weight of one gallon of milk is just about
eight and a half pounds. According to the medical records,
Matthew's weight was just under fifteen pounds. Goldie had unwittingly
given Tracy Riquel a simple physics lesson.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
There was this epiphany watching her and realizing, I know
that that can't happen that way. I know that's not possible.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
But even still, Tracy Raquel wouldn't just trust her own intuition.
She sought out the opinion of.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Experts, had multiple appointments with neurologists and pediatricians and pathologists
just in Savannah alone to explain, is this possible?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
So did anyone tell you it was?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
No one ever said that. No, they said no, it's
not physically possible.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Finally, emboldened, she called anyone and everyone who was there
the night Matthew died at Decab Medical Center.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
I just basically went down a list of people I
could call and just called everybody. Most people didn't want
to talk to me, and he did.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
It was Butch, her father, Jan's older brother. The Sanlin
family didn't have a reputation for nothing. Though his rap
sheet didn't match Jan's. Butch had been busted for shoplifting, trespassing, firearms,
and driving offences. But he did have a soft spot
for his niece.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Butch was a kind of terrifying man when I was
a child, Mister Georgia, mister all Southeastern Bodybuilders. It was
a really big, huge man, but he was always kind.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
What did he say happened?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
He didn't know the details exactly, but he said he
knew that they were responsible, that they had planned this,
and that they were going to blame it on me.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's really shocking. He told you that this was the
plan all along that Jan and Kathy wanted to kill
the baby. How did he know that?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
He said, I arrived at the emergency room and you
were sitting on a concrete slab where ambulances pull up,
and they were, you know, football field away in the
parking lot, discussing there, you know, their story and how
they were going to get this together. He said. He
walked up and he grabbed Jan and said, what have
you done? What have you done?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
How did Jim reply to that?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
He said he didn't have a response. That was it,
And so I think that I was the scapegoat.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
They put the blame on Tracy Riquel, but they didn't
say it was intentional. The easiest thing was to say
it was an accident. The truth is that Jan and
Kathy met little resistance. Think about it. Each person who
had their hands and eyes on Matthew neglected to take
any action. The staff and two hospitals had seen this
(29:45):
child and examined him. They wrote about his injuries, even
the old ones that showed clear signs of abuse. The
doctors saw it, they knew. The coroner signed off on it.
The police didn't ask any questions. Everyone just went along
with the story.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Nobody had to do any work. Nobody had to be
responsible or held accountable.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
But that was about to end. Tracy Riquel was a
soldier and she knew it was time to go to
war on the next Burden of Guilt.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
According to the Georgia Death Investigation Act, anytime a child
dies like that at autopsy has to be done. I
kept thinking about Sola, Well, how did the coroner sign
it out as an accidental lift?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Stay tuned for Burden of Guilt, the documentary coming in
twenty twenty four and airing only on Paramount Plus. If
you would like to reach out to the Burden of
Guilt team, email us at Burden of guiltpod at gmail
dot com. That's Burden of Guilt pod at gmail dot com.
(30:56):
If you or someone you know is worried about maltreatment
or suspec the fact that a child is being abused
or neglected, call the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline.
You can call or text one eight hundred four a child.
That's one eight hundred four two two four four five three.
(31:18):
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Burden of Guilt. Five star reviews go a long Way.
A big thank you to all of you who are listening,
and also be sure to check us out and follow
us on Instagram at Glass Podcasts. Burden of Guilt is
(31:40):
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and
executive produced by me Nancy Glass, written and produced by
Carrie Hartman and Andrea Gunning, also produced by Ben Fetterman
and associate producer Kristin Melchor. Our iHeart team is Ali
(32:03):
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special thanks to Tracy Riquel Burns
and her husband Bart. Voice acting in this episode was
performed by Trey Morgan. Audio editing and mixing by Matt
del Vecchio. Burden of Guild's theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Music library provided by my Music And For more podcasts
(32:26):
from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Nancy Glass
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com