← Burden of Guilt
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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker 1
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- [00:02]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Easy.
- [00:02]
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- [00:32]
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- [01:00]
Keith Urban
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- [01:30]
Nancy Glass
Hi, it's Nancy Glass. I hope you've been able to watch Burden of Guilt, the docu series on Paramount. Plus, that's where you can see the actual footage from the trial. You can meet the investigators, and of course you'll see Tracy Raquel Burns, the hero, the warrior in this story. And now that it's on the air, I wanted to talk with her again. Tracy Raquel, this is our first conversation since the documentary premiered on Paramount. Plus, so what's life been like for you since the TV series launched?
- [02:09]
Tracy Raquel Burns
That is a tough one. Life has been, well, overwhelming. It's been overwhelming. I didn't expect to feel so exposed. I think prior to all of this, if, if you had googled my name, nothing would have ever come up. You would have never seen a picture. And it, that's very much how I, how I liked my life to be. I felt very safe and comfortable and it is absolutely not that way now. And I knew that was going to be that way and I understood the risk for that. And there are purposes for doing this, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But yes, it's been overwhelming to me and I've had sleepless nights and all of that is just trauma from my childhood and feeling vulnerable and afraid. I wanted to, you know, crawl into the corner of my closet and not come out, to be honest. But it's irrational, and you have to talk yourself through it. And I have.
- [03:26]
Nancy Glass
Well, here's the thing, Tracy Raquel. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's a natural reaction. But I do wonder, do you regret having made the documentary and the podcast?
- [03:43]
Tracy Raquel Burns
No. I mean, no, I do not regret doing it. I have moments where, you know, you wish you could have your cake and eat it, too, if that makes some sort of sense.
- [03:56]
Nancy Glass
Yeah. You wish you could tell your story and then disappear into the ether.
- [04:02]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Yeah. Could have my total safe feeling and be totally anonymous. And it doesn't work that way. And I get that. So, no, I have no regrets. But, yeah, it's what stepping into the fire is all about.
- [04:14]
Nancy Glass
So let me ask you about Jan Barry Sandlin, the murderer, the man who killed your baby brother and the man who was your father.
- [04:23]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Well, we don't know that for sure.
- [04:25]
Nancy Glass
We don't know for sure. You're absolutely right.
- [04:28]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Yeah. I don't know who is my biological father.
- [04:31]
Nancy Glass
And you're hoping it's not Jan Barry Sandlin? Yes.
- [04:34]
Tracy Raquel Burns
At this point, that's just not even something I think about.
- [04:37]
Nancy Glass
But you saw him on the documentary. How did he look to you?
- [04:41]
Tracy Raquel Burns
He looks like an elderly man that's been in prison for a very, very long time. He looks like he's been through a lot, and he looks rough.
- [04:51]
Nancy Glass
How many years has it been since you've seen Jan's face?
- [04:56]
Tracy Raquel Burns
I have seen Jan's face twice a month, every year since the trials.
- [05:03]
Nancy Glass
Why?
- [05:04]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Because I go on Florida Department of Corrections twice a month to make sure he's still in prison. And I heard Leanne Mangone on the docu series, and she was one of the prosecutors say that he is one of the only people that she's ever put in prison, that she goes on Google to check and see that he's still in prison. And it shocked me when I heard it. And I was like, yes, that's what I do. I go and make sure he is still sitting where he is. And so, yes, it wasn't shocking to me to see his face, because I see it all the time, and they update that picture every Sunday. So if he were to ever break out of prison or they let him out of prison, I know exactly what he looks like and I know exactly where he is. Maybe some people would say that's unhealthy. Or maybe it's healthy. It's beneficial to me.
- [05:56]
Nancy Glass
Yeah. You're doing what you need to protect yourself.
- [06:00]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Apparently so, yes.
- [06:01]
Nancy Glass
Have you heard from Kathy, your mother, since this came out?
- [06:06]
Tracy Raquel Burns
No.
- [06:06]
Nancy Glass
And you haven't heard from Sheila, her sister?
- [06:10]
Tracy Raquel Burns
No.
- [06:10]
Nancy Glass
Okay, I want to shift to Ted Golder. He was married to your mother, and you thought he might have been your father. He was definitely your baby brother Matthew's biological father. And you talked about him at length in the podcast. Well, as you know, we received an email from his sister. Can I read part of that email to you and talk with you about your feelings?
- [06:38]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Okay.
- [06:39]
Nancy Glass
All right. So she says, I'm the sister of Ted Golder. My brother passed away in 2006 of ALS, and since he has no voice to speak his side of the story, I'll speak for him. My mother told him to stay away from Kathy. That's your mother. She was not the girl for him. But my brother had no intention of listening to my mother. And so it began. He was in love with her. She could do no wrong in his eyes. She was a majorette in high school, very popular. He was proud of her. He was aware of her relationship with Jan Sandlin, but blind to the fact of how deeply she was involved with him and would never break that tie. And as she stated at the trial, Kathy said, I love Jan since I was 12 years old. And that never wavered. So now, in 1968, Ted gets drafted, and he had to go to Vietnam. And during his tour of duty, that's when Kathy, who was his wife at the time, wrote him a Dear John letter. Dear John is goodbye. It's over. She still has that letter. His sister still has that letter. So he wrote to his mother and told her about the letter. And he said he threw his wedding ring into the Saigon River. He said, mother, you're right. And Kathy said to him in the letter that her baby was Jan Sandlin's baby and he was getting divorced from her. And then you fast forward to the summer of 1970. Ted returns home, and he's back with Kathy. Tracy's just a baby. My mother and father accepted it and even had Kathy, Ted, and Tracy up on the lake in their boat. So everything seemed to be going fine. Ted and Kathy got an apartment, and Kathy was pregnant, and I would visit them in their apartment. I even suggested to Kathy to name the baby Matthew. And everything seemed to be fine. Then Ted called his sister to say he came home from work and Kathy had moved out. She Was maybe seven months pregnant. No reason, just left. Ted had to regroup. He quit his job in Alabama. He moved back to Atlanta. He was never able to see his son, Matthew Bourne, or even know where Kathy had gone. He had no way of finding her yet. Then he came back to Atlanta, was notified that. That the baby was dead. And the first time he saw his son was at a funeral home. And then the night he came home from the funeral, he put his fist through our parents door. He was so distraught. And then years later, my brother told me about a paternity test and how happy he was to be, you know, talking to you, Tracy.
- [09:34]
Tracy Raquel Burns
And.
- [09:35]
Nancy Glass
And he was excited. This is now. He was excited to maybe be having grandchildren. He told me they could come over, jump all over his furniture, he wouldn't care. But the test came back and you weren't his daughter. And he was very, very disappointed. Even though everybody knew all along the truth, he was still hoping for a miracle. The letter also says that she and her sister were at the trial every day in the back row. And after the trial, they're interviewing Kathy, your mother, outside the courthouse. She was never charged with anything, but Ted's sister came up to Kathy and told her she was just as guilty as Jan and she needed to be in jail. So if I were to sum up that letter, here's the gist of it. So Ted and Kathy get married. Ted goes off to Vietnam. He gets a letter from Kathy, a Dear John letter, saying, I don't love you. The baby isn't yours, I want a divorce. He's brokenhearted. He gets home, but then everything seems to be fine again. They're living together, they're happy. He comes home one day and Kathy's moved out. He doesn't know what's happened. He doesn't know where she's gone. He moves to Atlanta to go and find her. And the only thing he knows about this baby is that the baby has died. So, Traci Raquel, what do you think of that letter?
- [11:07]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Most of what she said in the letter is the same information that Ted had said to me when I was speaking to him in the early to mid-90s. There was a period of time that I had communicated with Ted Golder that we had gotten in touch. He wanted to do a paternity test. And we talked for about six weeks. And during that six weeks, he had told me pretty much what she states in this letter.
- [11:36]
Nancy Glass
You spoke to Ted Golder's sister on the phone. What did she say to you?
- [11:42]
Tracy Raquel Burns
You know, she told me about her brother and, you know, him in high school and how handsome and sweet he was, and, you know, how much she loved him and that he, you know, would have been a good father. And the relationship with Kathy and, you know, the things that they saw that went wrong with Kathy and obviously Kathy's draw to Jan. Well, Kathy cheated on.
- [12:08]
Nancy Glass
Ted Golder with Jan, and even when she was married to Ted, she cheated on him with Jan.
- [12:14]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Yes.
- [12:14]
Nancy Glass
I can't even imagine the emotions of talking to this woman who at one point was your aunt. What else did she tell you?
- [12:23]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Okay, so a couple of things that she told me in. In the conversation that we had was one, she said, you know, I saw your mother, Kathy, in the newspaper once, and I thought she was referencing the trials, that she saw Kathy maybe in the newspaper during the trials. And I said, really? And she said, yeah, she had two broken legs and a broken arm, so she was almost in a body cast. And it occurred to me, like, I remembered two broken arms, two broken legs, right? And I was like, oh, yeah, that was a suicide attempt. And she said, oh, I didn't know that. Because in the paper, they didn't say that.
- [13:01]
Nancy Glass
Yes, that's a story that you told, both on the podcast and in the documentary of Kathy putting you in a seat on the balcony and then jumping off in front of you and not dying, but breaking both arms and both legs.
- [13:18]
Tracy Raquel Burns
She sat me on, just sat me on the porch and then jumped off. And my memory was that she broke both arms and both legs, but it was both legs and an arm. And I thought that was really ironic that there's this picture out there in 1972 of her in this cast, you know, of this event that, you know, that's directly relinked to this memory that I have. Another thing that she told me was my younger brother Jason was actually in kindergarten or the first grade, I can't remember which, with one of her boys. And she said, jason came to school one day and said, my father is in prison, and he killed my little brother, and when he gets out, I'm going to kill him. Now, the relevance of this is, is that that would have made Jason about seven. So I would have been around 12. Now, that's when Kathy started, like, openly. She had been around 11 or 12, openly telling me, Jan did it, Jan killed him, Jan this, that, whatever. You know, it was just this confirmation to me.
- [14:38]
Nancy Glass
I guess I would have thought, then why didn't Kathy go to the authorities or even Pam, Ted Goldger's sister, who, you Spoke to. Did she consider going to the authorities? Because, after all, it was her nephew.
- [14:52]
Tracy Raquel Burns
I think that everybody thought that there was something wrong with a whole lot of things in that county and surrounding counties. Not to be cryptic, but I think that there was a whole lot of homicides and crimes that were suspicious, and I think a lot of people thought there were a lot of things that were wrong and mishandled.
- [15:19]
Nancy Glass
And that is in connection with Jan Sandlin. Even in Pam's letter, she says, I think he killed his first wife, Nancy Tegeder. That was the case where it was determined to be a suicide. Except that how did Nancy Tegadir wrap herself up in sheets after she shot herself? And why would a pregnant woman commit suicide by shooting herself in the stomach? Stomach. It made no sense whatsoever. And also, William David Korn. That's another case that Jan has been associated with. William David Korn was a police officer. And the latest thing that we found in our research was that it's possible that William David Corn was having an affair with Nancy Tegeder, and that's why they both ended up dead.
- [16:07]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Well, I recently was told that Nancy was dating a police officer, but the name was never said. So I don't know who the police officer was, but that she was dating a police officer, and that person had no idea who the police officer was.
- [16:25]
Nancy Glass
Well, the police always had their suspicions about Jan's involvement in these two deaths. Did you ever hear stories about that while you were growing up?
- [16:35]
Tracy Raquel Burns
So, as a child, over and over again, I had heard that Jan killed Nancy. He came to her afterwards, that he killed a police officer, and they drove to Alabama and threw the gun in a lake. And that's what drove me to, you know, DeKalb county for the first time. To pull that incident report. No, actually, to pull a police report. And. And all there was was an incident report. Now, I was very young and didn't understand, but I understood enough to say, this is all there is. Like, it didn't make any sense to me. So when I, you know, first got Jim Mabe on the phone and talked to him, he was my angel. He was my savior. He's the very first person who said, I will get this done. He said, send me a letter. Then I sent him a letter outlining all of that. I didn't know who the police officer was at that time, but that exact phrase that she said over and over, that's what I sent him. And the thing was, he knew all of that, and he knew Jan Sandlin. And he says that's why he took that case. And it was so helpful, right?
- [17:47]
Nancy Glass
He suspected Jan Sandlin from day one.
- [17:53]
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- [18:27]
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- [18:40]
Nancy Glass
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- [18:42]
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- [18:43]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Accidents.
- [18:44]
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Tracy Raquel Burns
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- [19:59]
Nancy Glass
Traci Raquel We've received quite a few questions about this story, and one in particular involves you changing your name from Tracy to Tracy Raquel. You want to address that?
- [20:11]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Yes. So let's just back up a little bit and this is very complicated, but we'll back up. When I started school, first grade, my name is Tracy Sandlin and I went through school as Tracy Sandlin because that's who Kathy was with even when she wasn't with him. Now at 12 or 13 years old. I needed a birth certificate for something and Social Security card. And she hesitated like you wouldn't believe. Beat around the bush for weeks until it finally was unavoidable. And the reason was because on my birth certificate, she was married to Ted Golder when I was born. And on my birth certificate, my name was Golder. So I've got eight years of school records that are not legal. Had to go to a judge and the judge asked me, what name do you want? So I went to the name that was on my birth certificate, Golder. Not to mention it was Matt's name. And that made sense. And I didn't want anything to do with Jan. Changed everything. So now legally, my name is Tracy Raquel Golder. Now we fast forward to I'm in my twenties speaking to Ted Golder, and he wants to do this paternity test. He called on the phone and he said, well, the results came back. Then you're not my daughter. And he said, you're a very nice woman, you're lovely. I wish you all the best, but I can't have anything to do with you, and I would like it if you no longer use my name. So I didn't, when it was necessary, Raquel became my last name. And then when I got married, my first name became Tracy Raquel. And it was very important to me that my first name be Tracy Raquel, because it's all I have. And so that's why it is so important to me. That's my name and it is all I have. Now. It wasn't so upset setting to me that I wasn't his daughter. It hurt my feelings that he said, I don't want anything to do with you, you know, but what was really upsetting to me was that this, and I understand, you know, that it's a piece of symbolism. What was really upsetting to me was that it, you know, he sort of verbally took this connection that I had to Matthew away. And you know what, when I spoke with this sister, I told her, because I said, you know, I'm going to explain this on the podcast because a lot of people have asked why you know, the name. And I said, you know, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I, and I'm sorry, I'm going to tell. And she said, after I told her, she said, you know what? It sounds like something he would have done. And I said, I don't know if he just had a knee jerk reaction or if he was just mad or whatever. And she said, you know. I'm sorry.
- [23:45]
Nancy Glass
She sounds like a very nice person.
- [23:47]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Yeah. And I. You know what? I never spoke to him again. But I am the kind of person that if you ask me not to do something, I'm not going to ever do it.
- [23:56]
Nancy Glass
Tracy. Raquel, it took me a couple of years to get you to agree to tell your story. You didn't want the attention, but you did have a motive for finally participating in the docu series. You want to share that with us?
- [24:11]
Tracy Raquel Burns
So I wrote some notes down, of.
- [24:14]
Nancy Glass
Course, by all means. I know this isn't easy. So tell us what made you decide you needed to do this?
- [24:22]
Tracy Raquel Burns
Matthew is a part of me, and it's important that I show my love for him. I believe that his remains laid in his little casket waiting for me, and I thank him so much for that. I did this also because I wanted to bring awareness to the spectrum of child abuse that happens in homes both seen and unseen. But there's something else. I don't believe the full extent of justice has been served. I've always felt an obligation deeply to the families of the other victims of Jan, in part because of the information that was told to me over and over as a child. Also, other families have experienced profound loss because of Jan. I don't want to be cryptic, but if you follow this story closely, it will become clear that the Same system in 1970 through 72 that classified Matthew's death as an accident has failed to properly address other acts of violence that deserve attention. My hope is that people will start having conversations about this, and I truly believe that they have, and I've seen that they are.
- [25:45]
Nancy Glass
Well, that was beautifully said. Before we wrap up, I know there's something else you want to clear up.
- [25:54]
Tracy Raquel Burns
You know, what? Y'all might think this is silly. In the docuseries, I did say I didn't do anything wrong, and that's not true. I did violate sequestration. Even if it was walking by and pausing for 30 seconds and seeing her, I violated sequestration. And I knew that at the time. You know, I mean, I might not have stopped and watched the program and recorded it and did all this stuff, but I want to say, yes, I know I did that. Can we say that in the podcast? Can I say I did. I violated sequestration? Do you think it matters, or do you think anyone cares, or.
- [26:30]
Nancy Glass
Well, I think if you care, then that's what matters. I mean, that's always been our attitude towards the story. If it means something to you, it means something to us.
- [26:40]
Tracy Raquel Burns
And Then what you don't know is that there were two more trials, right? And every time I got on the stand, the judge turned to the jury and told them basically that I was dishonest because I had violated sequestration. And what everybody fails to realize is that then I had to leave the courtroom with this mass amount of press and the news everywhere going, that girl who brought the case failed it and brought it like, you know, and it was all over the news about how I, you know what, I failed it, how I blew it up. And, you know, I mean, it was mass humiliation. Like it was just horrifying, you know. And then what do you have to do? You have to. I'm begging them to bring the case back. And then you gotta swallow your pride two months later and just go back in there and do it again.
- [27:29]
Nancy Glass
So I'm just gonna say what I've said to you a hundred times. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your story and for being you.
- [27:37]
Tracy Raquel Burns
I mean, you know, I clearly have made a lot of mistakes along the way, embarrassing as it is.
- [27:42]
Nancy Glass
But yeah, well, we could argue about that forever. And you can stream the entire three part burden of guilt docuseries right now on Paramount.
- [27:53]
Keith Urban
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- [28:52]
Tracy Raquel Burns
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- [28:54]
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