Twenty-six years after she was blamed for her infant half-brother's death, Tracy Rhame finally got what she wanted Friday - her name cleared and her father convicted of murder.
Jan Barry Sandlin was immediately sentenced to life behind bars for the 1971 beating death of 4-month-old Matthew Golder.Prosecutors say Sandlin placed his then-2-year-old daughter Tracy in the baby's crib and made it look as if she had tossed him out. Ever since, she lived with the blame and guilt until the burden was lifted by the jury's verdict.
"I think it's wonderful, absolutely," Rhame, 27, said by phone from her home in Savannah. "My primary goal was to prove that he was responsible for this."
It wasn't until Rhame was an adult that nagging doubts about the case led her to push to have the investigation reopened.
The 46-year-old Sandlin, who is already serving a life sentence in Florida for armed robbery, was indicted last December after a new autopsy on Matthew's exhumed body found his injuries inconsistent with a fall from a crib.