Man Charged With Slaying and Framing His Stepchild

Tracy Rhame grew up being told she killed her 4-month-old brother in 1971 by throwing him from his crib when she was only 2. Now, 25 years later, her stepfather has been indicted on charges of killing the baby and framing her.

Jan Barry Sandlin, 46, was charged Thursday with murder, aggravated assault and cruelty to children and will be extradited from Florida, where he is in prison for armed robbery, prosecutor Lee Anne Mangone said.

“You’re telling me I’m being charged with murder?” Sandlin said in a telephone interview from prison. “I’m a little dumbfounded. I can’t even start to imagine where this came from. As far as the child dying, that’s true. As far as me having anything to do with it, no.”

Mangone, head of the DeKalb County district attorney’s Crimes Against Children Unit, said Rhame, now married and living in Savannah, had always been told that she had tossed 4-month-old Matthew Golder from his crib, and the coroner at the time pronounced the death an accident.

There is no listing for Rhame in Savannah, and Mangone said the woman didn’t want to talk with a reporter. But the prosecutor told her story.

Rhame asked police for details of her brother’s death when she was 17, and police gave her a report and told her it had been ruled an accident, Mangone said. Rhame was told there was nothing more that could be done.

Over the next several years, Rhame constantly analyzed the few details she had.

“She knew all of her life she couldn’t have done that,” Mangone said.

With the help of a family friend who worked for the FBI, Rhame contacted various authorities and was directed to the DeKalb County medical examiner in 1995. Rhame asked for the autopsy records and none were found.

That got the attention of Medical Examiner Joe Burton, who reviewed hospital records and determined that the baby’s injuries were inconsistent with a fall from a crib.

“There was no examination, no autopsy and no interviews” in 1971, Burton said on Friday.

The medical records indicated the baby died from multiple blows to the head, he said.

Sandlin was alone with the baby while the girl went with her mother to do the laundry, the prosecutor said. When they came home, the girl went inside and Sandlin sent her mother to unload the car, Mangone said.

When the mother came inside, she found the 2-year-old in the crib and the infant fatally injured on the floor.

Prosecutors contend Sandlin hurt the baby while they were gone. When the daughter came inside, Sandlin put Tracy in the crib to cast blame on her, Mangone said.