Speaker 1: Hi all, we have some exciting news to share. Paramount
Speaker 1: Plus has turned Burden of Guilt into a docuseries. You
Speaker 1: will get to meet the people involved, You'll hear from
Speaker 1: the people who have never spoken before, and you get
Speaker 1: to see where the story took place. We are so
Speaker 1: proud and excited to share it with you. You can
Speaker 1: stream it right now on Paramount Plus.
Speaker 2: I felt very confident that the fractures we observed in
Speaker 2: his head were not accidental, were not from a fall
Speaker 2: from the crib. They had been inflicted by another individual,
Speaker 2: and this would meet the manner of death. Now, as homicide.
Speaker 1: Pathologist doctor Stephen Dunnan is talking about an autopsy of
Speaker 1: a baby, it was conducted almost twenty years after his death.
Speaker 1: I'm Nancy Glass. This is Burden of Guilt Episode three,
Speaker 1: Ashes to Ashes.
Speaker 3: My daughter was almost two at the time, and I
Speaker 3: remember she was trying to pick up a gallon of
Speaker 3: milk and she didn't even lift that thing up off
Speaker 3: the ground.
Speaker 1: This was the moment that galvanized everything for Tracy Raquel
Speaker 1: when her little daughter, Goldie, attempted to pick up a
Speaker 1: gallon of milk but couldn't lift it. Tracy Raquel knew
Speaker 1: that she had not caused her baby brother, Matthew's death.
Speaker 1: It simply wasn't possible that she, as a two year old,
Speaker 1: had picked fifteen pound Matthew up and thrown him out
Speaker 1: of his crib and onto the floor. But of course,
Speaker 1: after years of being beaten down, she didn't trust her
Speaker 1: own instincts, so she went to consult experts in the
Speaker 1: medical field. Doctors reviewed Matthew's hospital file and concluded that
Speaker 1: his injuries didn't happen the way his mother, Kathy said
Speaker 1: they did. With this knowledge finally in hand, through pure perseverance,
Speaker 1: after years of trying, Tracy Riquel finally attracted the attention
Speaker 1: of someone in law enforcement. Jim Maybe, a forensic death
Speaker 1: investigator into Cab County, Georgia, agreed to help her.
Speaker 3: He was, I'd say, my lifeline. He rarely got that role.
Speaker 1: In former investigator Jim Maybe.
Speaker 4: I took her case to doctor Joe Burton, who at
Speaker 4: the time of the chief Medical Examiner for DECAM. Showed
Speaker 4: him what we had. He says, can we investigate this?
Speaker 4: He said absolutely. Now.
Speaker 1: Doctor Joe Burton was a widely respected pathologist, so to
Speaker 1: get his interest was a big deal.
Speaker 4: He assigned me to do a couple of things. One
Speaker 4: was to continue to interview Tracy again also find out
Speaker 4: where the accident occurred into camp.
Speaker 1: An investigation couldn't happen fast enough for Tracy Riquel. Jan
Speaker 1: Barry Sandlin's possible parole from his sentence for armed robbery
Speaker 1: was looming, and she was scared. She started pressing her mother, Kathy,
Speaker 1: to talk more about Matthew's death.
Speaker 3: I have probably asked Kathy everything under the sign, in
Speaker 3: every possible way that would be sweet, and ask her
Speaker 3: that would be forceful, accusations, everything you can imagine, anything
Speaker 3: that would get her to talk.
Speaker 1: Tracy Riquel says that years ago, during a phone call
Speaker 1: between her and her mother Kathy, Kathy made a shocking revelation.
Speaker 3: She said, you just don't understand when you're in love
Speaker 3: with someone that much, you'll do anything for somebody. We
Speaker 3: just wanted to start over. We wanted a new life.
Speaker 1: Now, for a second, you think, am I hearing this right?
Speaker 1: What on earth does this mean? They wanted to start over?
Speaker 1: Were the kids expendable? Racy Riquel was now in regular
Speaker 1: contact with Jim. Maybe he wanted to get anything he
Speaker 1: could on tape that was the one thing that would
Speaker 1: help his investigation.
Speaker 3: She's the one who said, you need to go and
Speaker 3: get this recorder, and it's perfectly legal in the state
Speaker 3: of Georgia. One person knows that you're being recorded and
Speaker 3: the other one does it, so we need to do
Speaker 3: this and send me everything you have. And that's how
Speaker 3: it started.
Speaker 1: Now, Kathy never repeated her statement about wanting to start over,
Speaker 1: but she made other admissions while the recorder was rolling. First,
Speaker 1: Tracy Riquel confronted Kathy about naming her as Matthew's killer.
Speaker 5: In my horror.
Speaker 6: All I feel is that I don't understand how I
Speaker 6: can be offered up like that. It would seem to
Speaker 6: me like someone would say, I don't know what happened.
Speaker 5: I just found them this way. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: Investigators listened to those recordings, and I wish we could
Speaker 1: play them for you, but they don't exist anymore. The transcripts, however,
Speaker 1: do so we use voice actors to recreate the conversation.
Speaker 1: And here's what was discussed.
Speaker 7: Well, I guess from what I told them, that's what
Speaker 7: they assumed happened. It's what I was led to believe.
Speaker 1: Tracy Riquel also brought up an occasion that Kathy had
Speaker 1: accused jan of killing Matthew.
Speaker 6: Sheila said that she remembers hearing you have a fight
Speaker 6: with him sometime after my's death at Anna's house in
Speaker 6: Fate Street.
Speaker 5: Where you said I hate you you killed my child.
Speaker 7: That was years later, maybe two years later, three years later,
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That was a really odd response to Tracy Riquel's comment.
Speaker 1: What difference would it make if it was two or
Speaker 1: three years later? Tercy Raquel pressed Kathy on why she
Speaker 1: hadn't tried harder to find out what happened to Matthew.
Speaker 6: I mean, you never ever made an attempt to go
Speaker 6: to the police.
Speaker 7: If they had found anything that they could do to
Speaker 7: prove it with, they would have arrested him. Nobody really knew.
Speaker 7: Would it be easier for you to accept your child
Speaker 7: being murdered or your child dying in an accident? Answer
Speaker 7: that question for me, which would you have a harder
Speaker 7: time with and when people are telling you that it
Speaker 7: was an accident.
Speaker 1: In other moments on the call, Tracy Raquel tried to
Speaker 1: show her mother some grace.
Speaker 6: I firmly believed in my heart that Jane had frightened
Speaker 6: you into saying that I was responsible for it. I
Speaker 6: firmly believe that you knew and he either threatened to
Speaker 6: hurt me or he threatened to hurt you, and he
Speaker 6: scared the hell out of you.
Speaker 5: And that's why you didn't You didn't press it.
Speaker 7: No, through the years, he did many times convince me
Speaker 7: he didn't do it. There were times when he would
Speaker 7: cry when I questioned him about it, and he would
Speaker 7: cry and say he didn't do it, and then like
Speaker 7: a fool, A lot of times I fall into it,
Speaker 7: just like I balled into him being sorry he beat
Speaker 7: me up or whatever. How do you think that makes
Speaker 7: me feel now?
Speaker 1: Terracy also raised the subject of Jan's first wife, Nancy Tagetter.
Speaker 1: Jan moved in with Kathy, Matthew and Terca Riquel only
Speaker 1: weeks after Nancy died by suicide, but the circumstances around
Speaker 1: her death were very strange. Nancy had shot herself in
Speaker 1: the stomach, and she was pregnant at the time.
Speaker 5: But you don't think he was responsible for killing her?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 7: I do.
Speaker 5: Do you mean you actually think he pulled the trigger?
Speaker 7: I don't know if he actually pulled the trigger or
Speaker 7: if he talked her into pulling the trigger. But I
Speaker 7: think either way he's responsible.
Speaker 1: Jim Maybe listened to the tape of the call. It
Speaker 1: was another brick in building a case for the district
Speaker 1: attorney to consider. Maybe then said about acquiring the important
Speaker 1: paperwork from nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4: Now, according to the Georgia Deaths Investigation Act, anytime a
Speaker 4: child dies under those circumstances of autopicy has to be done.
Speaker 1: When Jim Maybe got his hands on the death certificate,
Speaker 1: he was confused. It said the cause of death blunt
Speaker 1: forced trauma to the head and indicated the cause of
Speaker 1: that was a fall from bit.
Speaker 4: And I kept thinking to myself, well, how did the
Speaker 4: coroner sign it out as an accidental net how did
Speaker 4: he know how it occurred, what the circumstances were surrounding it.
Speaker 1: After first being unable to locate an autopsy report, Jim
Speaker 1: Maybe discovered that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation did do
Speaker 1: an autopsy on Matthew the day after he died, on
Speaker 1: December twenty eighth, nineteen seventy one. It was performed at
Speaker 1: the funeral home. Matthew's death certificate was signed by a
Speaker 1: corner now a corner is just an elected official who
Speaker 1: establishes the cause of death when a person does not
Speaker 1: die of natural causes, and in nineteen seventy one, it
Speaker 1: wasn't too hard to qualify for the position. Former District
Speaker 1: Attorney j.
Speaker 8: Tom Morgan the only way to be a coroner was
Speaker 8: to get more votes to the nets person and to
Speaker 8: have a high school education and to have no felony convictions.
Speaker 8: It did not require a medical degree or any expertise
Speaker 8: in determining cause of death. Usually the coroners, particularly here
Speaker 8: in the South, were employees or owned funeral homes. In fact,
Speaker 8: a lot of autopsies were actually done in funeral homes
Speaker 8: in the South in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4: I found out that mister Harvey, who was the coroner
Speaker 4: back then, was still in the area and his decision
Speaker 4: to make it an accidental death went without any kind
Speaker 4: of police investigation that we could find, and we really
Speaker 4: didn't get an answer as to why he signed it
Speaker 4: out as an accidental death. He was determined by the family,
Speaker 4: not officially or not by an investigation, that Tracy caused
Speaker 4: that death.
Speaker 1: As Jim May worked the investigation, he knew he had
Speaker 1: to go visit the place where everything went down Matthew's bedroom.
Speaker 4: We didn't even know if the apartment complex were it
Speaker 4: occurred even existed anymore.
Speaker 1: And twenty six years later those apartments were still there
Speaker 1: and pretty much unchanged.
Speaker 4: We wanted to look at the flooring because we wanted
Speaker 4: to see what kind of impact this fall from the
Speaker 4: crib would have had or floor us as the corpor
Speaker 4: and the resident manager was extremely helpful with us. He
Speaker 4: explained that back then the floor was a wooden floor,
Speaker 4: but it was covered by a pretty thick carpet.
Speaker 8: Every apartment in Atlanta head shag carpet. All we needed was
Speaker 8: saw a lot of lamp and all my brothers on
Speaker 8: the eight track and we would be ready to go.
Speaker 1: Jim maybe also had questions about how Tracy Raquel would
Speaker 1: even get access to baby Matthew in his crib.
Speaker 4: We talked to her mother about the crib and like
Speaker 4: all cribs just got one side that you can raise
Speaker 4: up or down, and even when it was down, Kathy said,
Speaker 4: it's hard ford to reach over and get the child
Speaker 4: and get it out of herself. It took that information
Speaker 4: back to doctor Burton.
Speaker 1: Doctor Joe Burton, the lead medical examiner reviewing the case
Speaker 1: died in twenty nineteen. A close colleague worked on the investigation.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephen Dunton. I'm a forensic pathologist. I currently work
Speaker 2: for the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and have so
Speaker 2: for ten years. Prior to that, I spent more than
Speaker 2: twenty years as a medical examiner here in the metropolitan
Speaker 2: Atlanta area, including.
Speaker 5: De Camp County.
Speaker 1: Doctor Burton asked doctor Duncan to look at the medical
Speaker 1: records to see what he could gather from the report
Speaker 1: written the night Matthew was admitted to the hospital.
Speaker 3: Everyone who was there when Matthew died in our family knows.
Speaker 3: The surgeon came out and said the injury to his
Speaker 3: head was as if you took your fist and put
Speaker 3: it through a watermelon.
Speaker 2: The skull fractures in this child were far too extensive,
Speaker 2: too serious, too complicated to have resulted from him simply
Speaker 2: dropping from no more than about four feet and probably
Speaker 2: less than that without having been propelled in some fash
Speaker 2: two year old would not have been able to add
Speaker 2: any momentum to his flight through the air. As a
Speaker 2: much larger person who could actually throw a child or
Speaker 2: take a child and slam a child down might be
Speaker 2: capable of doing.
Speaker 1: While the medical examiner's team was evaluating records, Jim Maybe
Speaker 1: was pressing Kathy to write down everything she remembered about
Speaker 1: December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy one, and to tercy Quel's surprise,
Speaker 1: Kathy provided a lot more insight into what occurred in
Speaker 1: the apartment the night Matthew died.
Speaker 4: Missus Allman told us when she first rout, her and
Speaker 4: Tracy had gone chopping and also done some laundry. Jan
Speaker 4: was the only one there watching this child, and she
Speaker 4: went in, like any mother want to go in check
Speaker 4: on the child. And he wouldn't allow it. And I
Speaker 4: say he wouldn't allow it. He talked her out of it,
Speaker 4: but did send Tracy inside. They got the groceries in
Speaker 4: in the laundry, and when she got the laundry, which
Speaker 4: was the last thing they had to get out of
Speaker 4: the car, she checked on the child. This is when
Speaker 4: she discovered he was unresponsible based on that. It just
Speaker 4: run above a lot of red flags. I didn't understand
Speaker 4: why he didn't want her to see the child or whatever.
Speaker 4: That doesn't make him a killer.
Speaker 1: In a follow up with Kathy, Jim got even more
Speaker 1: information out of her.
Speaker 4: When I talked to Kathy maybe a week or so later,
Speaker 4: she believed that Jan had assaulted his child.
Speaker 1: It was the first time Kathy had told law enforcement
Speaker 1: directly that she believed Jan killed Matthew. Jan, not Tracy Riquel.
Speaker 1: What was happening? Why was she speaking up Now?
Speaker 4: We told her some of the things that we had
Speaker 4: discovered and what we believed, and they were going to
Speaker 4: get the death certificate change from accidental to house side.
Speaker 4: Now she can't say this, but she gave me the
Speaker 4: impression I'm going to cooperate with them because the next
Speaker 4: step is the police, and I ain't going to jail
Speaker 4: for Jan Salmon.
Speaker 1: Now Kathy was pointing the finger at Jan. If she
Speaker 1: really thought her ex husband had killed her baby, why
Speaker 1: did she stay with him for years and have another
Speaker 1: child with him? But once Cathy started talking to Jim,
Speaker 1: maybe she kept talking. We mentioned Jan's first wife, Nancy
Speaker 1: Tigeter earlier when we were talking about the recorded call
Speaker 1: between Tracy Riquell and Kathy, And as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Nancy tragically committed suicide. Then just weeks later, Jan moved
Speaker 1: in with Kathy. Well, here's the rest of the story.
Speaker 1: When Nancy was sixteen, she had a baby boy with
Speaker 1: Jan and they got married. Nancy Jan's marriage was on
Speaker 1: the rocks on the night Nancy died. They had been
Speaker 1: separated and Nancy was several months pregnant with another man's child,
Speaker 1: but she wanted to work it out with Jan and
Speaker 1: stay married. Jan wanted to end the marriage. As Jan
Speaker 1: pulled up to Nancy's apartment that night, she was on
Speaker 1: the phone with her best friend.
Speaker 9: My name is Jackie Wilson. It was Jackie Jenkins back then.
Speaker 9: I met Nancy the first time at the swimming pool
Speaker 9: in Doraville. I was twelve or thirteen, and we were
Speaker 9: friends there on and off all the way through school
Speaker 9: and after high school.
Speaker 1: Like Kathy, Nancy fell head over heels for Jan. He
Speaker 1: was a bad boy, exciting and unpredictable.
Speaker 9: I'm just naming. Jan was crazy. Nancy was in love
Speaker 9: with a crazy man.
Speaker 1: But once they were married, Jan's true nature surfaced.
Speaker 9: There was times an eight slap and I couldn't take that.
Speaker 1: Nancy was expecting to meet Jan at her apartment the
Speaker 1: night she died, hoping for a reconciliation. She wanted to
Speaker 1: stay together for the sake of their little boy. The
Speaker 1: next morning, Nancy was found dead with gunshot wounds to
Speaker 1: the abdomen and her body wrapped in a sheet. A
Speaker 1: suicide note lay close by. She was only nineteen.
Speaker 9: I had a real difficult time accepting the fact that
Speaker 9: Nancy had taken her own life. She had appointments, she
Speaker 9: had things she was going to do, and I had
Speaker 9: talked with her on the phone that night.
Speaker 3: I talked with.
Speaker 9: Her on the phone until she said, I think Jan's here.
Speaker 9: Jan Sandlin, in my book, either killed her himself or
Speaker 9: cost to happen, because to my life, he was the
Speaker 9: last person that actually saw her. Because when we're on
Speaker 9: the phone, she said, don't Jan's here, there's somebody in
Speaker 9: the car with him. I don't know who was in
Speaker 9: the car with him. But the next day she was dead.
Speaker 1: How exactly does a dead person wrap herself up in
Speaker 1: a sheet after she dies? But there was also a
Speaker 1: suicide note.
Speaker 9: Nancy was a teenager and when things didn't go right,
Speaker 9: she would write little notes that people might interpret as
Speaker 9: a suicide note. Because she was hurting so bad. She
Speaker 9: wrote a bunch of notes like that that noe Jan
Speaker 9: could have picked up from anywhere and put there. She
Speaker 9: wasn't suicidal.
Speaker 1: Jim Mabe was also skeptical that Nancy died by shooting herself.
Speaker 1: Kathy told Jim that jan wanted to quote get rid
Speaker 1: of her end quote.
Speaker 4: Think about it, and you want to commit suicide. You
Speaker 4: want it over as fast as you can. To shoot
Speaker 4: yourself in the abdomen for suicide, don't need to make sense.
Speaker 4: That really red flag to me.
Speaker 1: Tracy Raquel learned something new and shocking from Kathy's statements
Speaker 1: to investigators. She learned that she was also injured that
Speaker 1: day Matthew died.
Speaker 3: She to take me to the doctor because I had
Speaker 3: fallen down a concrete flight of stairs supposedly and was
Speaker 3: bleeding from both my ears.
Speaker 4: I wonder if she actually filled down the steps or
Speaker 4: that's what they say and she was actually pushed.
Speaker 1: Tracy Quell's medical records revealed that these injuries were not minor.
Speaker 1: She was treated for bruises and a bleeding ear.
Speaker 3: I feel like they just wanted to get rid of
Speaker 3: both of us. Just like she said in her comments,
Speaker 3: we just wanted to start over. We didn't want to
Speaker 3: do this, wanted to have our own life together and start.
Speaker 1: Over, but Jim maybe had some empathy for Kathy.
Speaker 4: Because of Jan's history suspicions of things that he had done.
Speaker 4: I believe in my heart she was afraid of Jam.
Speaker 4: Every time you look around, he's involved in him on
Speaker 4: an injury or somebody, or death or somebody. You got
Speaker 4: a choice, blame your daughter. Your daughter not gonna kill you,
Speaker 4: and Jan Samuel'll stay off your bag. Go ahead and
Speaker 4: tell the truth that Jan Samlon did it and you
Speaker 4: could be dead. With his background, that's not out of
Speaker 4: the realm. That doesn't justify what she did. I'm not
Speaker 4: saying it, but I'm not going to judge her.
Speaker 1: Kathy has always been steadfast that she believed what happened
Speaker 1: to Matthew was an accident, and this is documented in
Speaker 1: court testimony and in her statement to investigators. We should
Speaker 1: say there's no evidence that Kathy actually believed that Jan
Speaker 1: killed Matthew and covered it up. According to the conversations
Speaker 1: Kathy had with Tracy Riquel that are part of the
Speaker 1: case file, Kathy has no memory of telling police her
Speaker 1: two year old was responsible. In fact, in the wake
Speaker 1: of Matthew's death, she has no real memory of anything.
Speaker 7: I don't even remember making that statement. What that paper
Speaker 7: says is wrong about a lot of things. I don't
Speaker 7: know what is on that paper.
Speaker 5: You mean it is wrong.
Speaker 7: I cannot tell you anything I said or did that
Speaker 7: entire two weeks afterwards.
Speaker 5: I mean, is that because of Matt's death? But the
Speaker 5: Jan scare you, I have no idea.
Speaker 7: All I can tell you is that I was in shock.
Speaker 7: I don't know what was going on. What I can
Speaker 7: remember him telling me later sometime somehow that got in
Speaker 7: my head and I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody else,
Speaker 7: So I guess it came from him.
Speaker 5: What do you mean, you aren't allowed to talk to
Speaker 5: anybody else?
Speaker 7: I was in seclusion with him for two weeks. I
Speaker 7: don't know what the hell happened during those.
Speaker 5: Two weeks with Jan. You were in seclusion?
Speaker 7: Yeah, where, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't understand. I mean, what do you mean, I
Speaker 5: don't know you were locked up somewhere.
Speaker 7: I assume I was at the apartment with him, but
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: The medical examiner's team went to see District Attorney J.
Speaker 1: Tom Morgan.
Speaker 8: It is very rare for a medical examiner on his
Speaker 8: or her own to come see us and say, you
Speaker 8: need to take a hard look at this case. Tracy's
Speaker 8: story was unbelievable. Doctor Burton basically said, there's no way
Speaker 8: in hell that this child died from these types of
Speaker 8: injuries from a shortfall from a crib onto a shack floor.
Speaker 1: After reviewing the recordings with Kathy, the medical records, and
Speaker 1: the medical examiner's investigation, Morgan felt like he had enough
Speaker 1: to go to a grand jury.
Speaker 8: The grand jury decided that there was probable call sufficient
Speaker 8: evidence to go forward with the prosecution of Jan Simon
Speaker 8: for the murder of Matthew Goulder.
Speaker 1: But for a trial they would need more than probable cause.
Speaker 1: Doctor Stephen Duntan.
Speaker 2: We spoke about the need and the propriety of seeing
Speaker 2: these injuries with our ownknives and evaluating them on ourselves
Speaker 2: rather than relying on other people's documentation.
Speaker 8: After many discussions, Doctor Burton, Joe Tomy, we can assume
Speaker 8: the body, but there was nothing going to be there.
Speaker 8: But at the same time, if we don't do it,
Speaker 8: you're going to pay the price for it.
Speaker 1: The sad truth is bodies decomposed. We bury bodies so
Speaker 1: that over the years they become part of the earth
Speaker 1: again and Matthew's tiny body had been in the ground
Speaker 1: for more than a quarter of a century. It was
Speaker 1: likely they would find very little bones.
Speaker 8: Perhaps the defense rightfully so would say to the jury
Speaker 8: there was an easy way to prove this case. All
Speaker 8: they had to do was go aszume the body. And
Speaker 8: since they're not assuming the body, they're trying to hide something.
Speaker 8: So he said we should go ahead and try.
Speaker 4: To do it.
Speaker 1: But they needed Kathy because apparent is the person who
Speaker 1: must sign a document granting permission for the exhumation of
Speaker 1: a minor child's body. And she said, yes, you.
Speaker 2: Don't know what to expect. I've seen human bodies exhumed
Speaker 2: after a year that look like they had been buried
Speaker 2: the day before. I've seen bodies that were buried six
Speaker 2: months earlier that were nearly skeletonized. Knowing how small this
Speaker 2: little human body was, and not really knowing how the
Speaker 2: embalming process might have taken place, I don't think either
Speaker 2: one of us would have been surprised if the casket
Speaker 2: was opened and there was nothing identifiable, perhaps other than bones.
Speaker 3: I was told we're going to do this exhumation. It's
Speaker 3: checking the box, but there probably won't be anything there
Speaker 3: at least we can say we did it.
Speaker 1: Teresa Rickill's family was stretched from Georgia to Alabama. Kathy
Speaker 1: buried Matthew near her grandparents in a serene, picturesque cemetery
Speaker 1: about an hour north of Birmingham.
Speaker 2: Duck River Baptist Church. This quiet country setting that seemed
Speaker 2: like such a per place for a cemetery.
Speaker 8: The church was on a hill, as was the little
Speaker 8: church graveyard. When we got there, it was a clear day,
Speaker 8: a little cool, and when I got to the grave site,
Speaker 8: the dirt had already been moved. Coincidentally, the grave digger
Speaker 8: who put Matthew in the ground was the same grave
Speaker 8: digger that dug him back up.
Speaker 2: I remember feeling a bit more somber. It seemed to
Speaker 2: me that we were disturbing a sleeping baby, and that
Speaker 2: really bothered me. Knowing the stakes that were involved in
Speaker 2: a case like this, one that had not been initially
Speaker 2: judged to be homicide and one that we had now
Speaker 2: decided probably is, I knew that we had to do
Speaker 2: everything right.
Speaker 1: The pressure was on and emotions were high. Assistant District
Speaker 1: Attorney Leanne Mangon was assigned to the case. She attended
Speaker 1: the exsummation as well. She tried to support Kathy as
Speaker 1: she watched everything unfold.
Speaker 10: I remember her being quite emotional, crying. I remember her
Speaker 10: standing back. I don't think she was right up at
Speaker 10: the gravesite, and I kind of took my cues from her.
Speaker 10: She wanted to stand back, and we.
Speaker 2: Let that happen. I don't remember anybody laughing, smiling. It
Speaker 2: really affected all of us, and I know it affected me.
Speaker 2: It was a somber mood from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: And of course the investigators didn't expect the exhumation to
Speaker 1: offer much information.
Speaker 8: We had all expected the ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
Speaker 8: that if there was anything in there, it would just
Speaker 8: been a few mains.
Speaker 2: The conditions that we discovered the gravesite, being on an
Speaker 2: elevated area with a clear method by which water could
Speaker 2: channel away was couraging. And then when the grave was
Speaker 2: opened and we found that the vault lid was still
Speaker 2: tightly sealed, that was also encouraging. But we still didn't.
Speaker 1: Know a burial vault in cases of coffin and helps
Speaker 1: to protect it from natural elements.
Speaker 8: The casket was very small. We didn't need a heart
Speaker 8: because we're talking about a very small box. Doctor Burton
Speaker 8: picked the casket up and put it in the back
Speaker 8: of an suv. We followed the suv down to Birmingham.
Speaker 2: Once we got to the Birmingham Morgue, where the medical
Speaker 2: examiner for Jefferson County had so graciously allowed us to
Speaker 2: perform our examination, casket was open and were amazed what
Speaker 2: we saw.
Speaker 8: It was a moment of complete silence and shock.
Speaker 10: The thing I will never forget when they opened the
Speaker 10: coffin there was a perfectly preserved infant child clutching the
Speaker 10: teddy bear that his mom had put in his arms
Speaker 10: before he was buried.
Speaker 4: I just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 10: It was a transformative experience. It was an unforgettable, horrible,
Speaker 10: unimaginable moment. I had to step away.
Speaker 1: What they found did much more than check a box
Speaker 1: for a court battle. What they found would change everything.
Speaker 4: It just amazes me. Doctor Bird, who had done probably
Speaker 4: over ten thousand autopsies, said himself, he had never seen
Speaker 4: our body. That will preserved me in that long underground.
Speaker 4: God knew the truth. God preserved that child till we
Speaker 4: got there. He is waiting for us to do it.
Speaker 4: We did.
Speaker 1: On the next burden of Guilt.
Speaker 11: This was a very old case, and while we had
Speaker 11: prosecuted some cold cases, this was the coldest. This was frigid,
Speaker 11: and we knew there was going to be a hefty
Speaker 11: fight in front of us at trial.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for Burden of Guilt at documentary coming in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and airing only on Paramount Plus. If
Speaker 1: you would like to reach out to the Burden of
Speaker 1: Guilt team, email us at burdenofguiltpod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Burden of Guilt pod at gmail dot com. If
Speaker 1: you or someone you know is worried about maltreatment or
Speaker 1: suspect that a child is being abused or neglected, call
Speaker 1: the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline. You can call
Speaker 1: or text one eight hundred four a child. That's one
Speaker 1: eight hundred four two two four four five three. One
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Speaker 1: A big thank you for listening, and also be sure
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Speaker 1: Glass Podcasts. Burden of Guilt is a production of Glass Podcasts,
Speaker 1: a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted and executive produced by me Nancy Glass,
Speaker 1: written and produced by Carrie Hartman and Andrea Gunning. Also
Speaker 1: produced by Ben Fetterman, Lauren Murphy and associate producer Kristin Melchiori.
Speaker 1: Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Tracy Raquel Burns and her husband Bart. Voice
Speaker 1: acting in this episode was performed by Carla Burgess and
Speaker 1: Nally Mobley. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio. Burden
Speaker 1: of Guilt's theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music live provided
Speaker 1: by my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit
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