Pod Insights Burden of Guilt The Burden of Truth: Tracyraquel’s Journey for Justice | BONUS | Season 1 About this episode In this emotional interview with Nancy Glass, Tracyraquel shares how the Burden of Guilt docuseries affected her life. You can watch the entire Burden of Guilt docuseries right now, exclusively on Paramount+ https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/burden-of-guilt/.
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1:04 Nancy Glass? Hi, it's Nancy Glass. I hope you've been able to watch Burden of Guilt, the docu-series on Paramount+. 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+. So what's life been like for you since the TV series launched?
1:43 Speaker 05 That is a tough one. Phew. Life has been, uh... well...
1:53 Speaker 05 overwhelming. It's been overwhelming.
1:57 Speaker 05 I didn't expect to feel so...
2:02 Speaker 05 Exposed.
2:05 Speaker 05 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, that way now. And I, and I knew that was going to be that way. And I, and I, you know, I understood the risk for that.
2:35 Speaker 05 And there are purposes for doing this, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But yes, it's been, um, it's been overwhelming to me and, and, um, you know, I've had sleepless nights and all of that. It's just a trauma from my childhood and, you know, feeling vulnerable and afraid. I wanted to, you know, crawl into the corner of my closet and not come out, to be honest. But, um, it's irrational and you have to talk yourself through it and I have.
3:00 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.
3:10 Nancy Glass? But I do wonder, do you regret having made the documentary and the podcast?
3:17 Speaker 05 No, I mean,
3:20 Speaker 05 no, I do not regret doing it. I have moments where, you know, you wish you could have your cake and eat it too.
3:29 Speaker 05 But if that makes some sort of sense.
3:30 Nancy Glass? Yeah. You wish you could tell your story and then disappear into the ether.
3:36 Speaker 05 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.
3:47 Nancy Glass? So let me ask you about Jan Barry-Samlin, the murderer, the man who killed your baby brother and the man who was your father.
3:57 Speaker 05 Well, we don't know that for sure.
3:59 Nancy Glass? We don't know for sure. You're absolutely right.
4:02 Speaker 05 Yeah, I don't know who is my biological father.
4:04 Nancy Glass? And you're hoping it's not Jan Barry-Samlin, yes?
4:08 Speaker 05 At this point, that's just not even something I think about.
4:11 Nancy Glass? But you saw him on the documentary. How did he look to you?
4:15 Speaker 05 Uh, he looks like a, an elderly man that's, that's been in prison for a very, very long time. You know, he looks like he's been through a lot and he looks rough.
4:25 Nancy Glass? How many years has it been since you've seen Jan's face?
4:30 Speaker 05 I have seen Jan's face twice a month every year since the trials.
4:37 Nancy Glass? Why?
4:38 Speaker 05 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
5:19 Speaker 05 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.
5:30 Nancy Glass? Yeah, you're doing what you need to protect yourself.
5:34 Speaker 05 Apparently so, yes.
5:35 Nancy Glass? Have you heard from Kathy, your mother, since this came out?
5:40 Speaker 05 No.
5:40 Nancy Glass? And you haven't heard from Sheila, her sister?
5:44 Speaker 05 No.
5:44 Nancy Glass? Okay, I want to shift to Ted Golda. 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?
6:12 Speaker 05 Okay.
6:13 Nancy Glass? All right. So she says, "I'm the sister of Ted Golda. 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.
6:58 Nancy Glass? And as she stated at the trial, Kathy said, "I loved 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,
7:44 Nancy Glass? 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.
8:29 Nancy Glass? He moved back to Atlanta. He was never able to see his son, Matthew, born, or even know where Kathy had gone. He had no way of finding her yet. Then he came back to Atlanta, was notified 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. And he was excited. This is now. He was excited to maybe be having grandchildren.
9:14 Nancy Glass? 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.
9:59 Nancy Glass? 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 Tracy Raquel, what do you think of that letter?
10:41 Speaker 05 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 Golders. 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.
11:10 Nancy Glass? You spoke to Ted Golders' sister on the phone. What did she say to you?
11:15 Speaker 05 Um, 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.
11:29 Speaker 05 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.
11:40 Nancy Glass? Well, Kathy cheated on Ted Goldner with Jan. And even when she was married to Ted, she cheated on him with Jan.
11:48 Speaker 05 Yes.
11:48 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?
11:57 Speaker 05 Okay, so a couple of things that she told me 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.
12:35 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.
12:52 Speaker 05 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 and this cast, you know, of this event that, you know, that's directly relinked to this memory that I have.
13:22 Speaker 05 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,
13:40 Speaker 05 My father is in prison and he killed my little brother. And when he gets out, I'm gonna 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.
14:12 Nancy Glass? I guess I would have thought then, why didn't Kathy go to the authorities? Or even Pam, Ted Gold's sister, who you spoke to? Did she consider going to the authorities? Because after all, it was her nephew.
14:26 Speaker 05 I, 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, that there was a whole lot of homicides and crimes that, that were suspicious. And um, I think a lot of people thought there were a lot of things that were wrong and mishandled.
14:53 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 Tegater. That was the case where it was determined to be a suicide. Except that, how did Nancy Tegater wrap herself up in sheets after she shot herself? And why would a pregnant woman commit suicide by shooting herself in the stomach? It made no sense whatsoever. And also, William David Corn, that's another case that Jan has been associated with. William David Corn 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 Tegater.
15:38 Nancy Glass? And that's why they both ended up dead. Well.
15:43 Speaker 05 I recently was was told that Nancy was dating a police officer. But the name was never said. So I don't know who she who the police officer was, but that she was dating a police officer. But that and that person had no idea who the police officer was, so.
15:59 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?
16:09 Speaker 05 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 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.
16:54 Speaker 05 He was my savior. He's the very first person who said, I will get this done. He said, send me a letter. And then I sent him a letter outlining all of that. I didn't know who the police officer was at that time, but that 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.
17:20 Nancy Glass? Right. He suspected Jan Sandlin from day one.
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18:25 Nancy Glass? Tracy 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. Do you want to address that?
18:36 Speaker 05 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 till it finally was unavoidable. And the reason was because on my birth certificate, she was married to Ted Goldar when I was
19:21 Speaker 05 born, and on my birth certificate, my name was Goldar. 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, Goldar. Not to mention, it was Matt's name. And that makes sense, and I didn't want anything to do with Jan. Changed everything, so now legally, my name is Tracy Raquel Goldar. Now we fast forward to I'm in my twenties, speaking to Ted Goldar, and he wants to do this paternity test.
20:09 Speaker 05 He called on the phone and he said, "Well, the results came back and you're not my daughter."
20:19 Speaker 05 And he said, "You're a very nice woman. You're lovely.
20:26 Speaker 05 I wish you all the best, but I can't have anything to do with you.
20:32 Speaker 05 And I would like it if you no longer use my name."
20:36 Speaker 05 So...
20:41 Speaker 05 I didn't.
20:44 Speaker 05 When it was necessary, Raquel became my last name.
20:49 Speaker 05 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's all I have. Now, it wasn't so upsetting to me that I wasn't his daughter.
21:21 Speaker 05 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, um, 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.
21:44 Speaker 05 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."
22:10 Nancy Glass? She sounds like a very nice person.
22:12 Speaker 05 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.
22:22 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?
22:36 Speaker 05 So I wrote some notes down.
22:39 Nancy Glass? Of course, by all means, I know this isn't easy. So tell us, what made you decide you needed to do this?
22:48 Speaker 05 Matthew was 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
23:01 Speaker 05 so much for that.
23:04 Speaker 05 I did this also because I wanted to bring awareness to the spectrum of child abuse that happens in homes, both seen and unseen.
23:16 Speaker 05 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.
24:02 Speaker 05 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.
24:11 Nancy Glass? Well, that was beautifully said.
24:14 Nancy Glass? Before we wrap up, I know there's something else you want to clear up.
24:19 Speaker 05 You know what? Y'all might think this is silly. In the docu-series, 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?
24:55 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.
25:05 Speaker 05 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
25:17 Speaker 05 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, "The girl who brought the case failed it and..." 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, just go back in there and do it again.
25:55 Nancy Glass? So I'm just gonna say what I've said to you 100 times. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story and for being you.
26:02 Speaker 05 I mean, you know, I clearly have made a lot of mistakes along the way, embarrassing as it is, but yeah.
26:09 Nancy Glass? Well, we could argue about that forever. And you can stream the entire three-part Burden of Guilt docu-series right now on Paramount Plus.
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26:49 Speaker 06 Football Sundays are at my house this year, so I've been making a Total Wine & More run before every kickoff. Cold beer for the group is a given, but this time of year, I like to bring in some fall flavors. A bottle of maple whiskey and a salted caramel whiskey that even my friends who don't drink whiskey end up trying. I get everything I need at the lowest prices at Total Wine. Discover your new favorite fall flavors at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Must be 21.
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