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The Disappearance of Sandra Burris · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So picture this. It's a hot, incredibly heavy Louisiana evening.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: You know that kind of humidity where the air just
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: feels like thick in your lungs? Exactly.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Just totally oppressive. And it is Tuesday, July 26, 2005.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: We're standing in this quiet gravel driveway in a small town,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and two people are waiting for separate rides. Right.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: And one of them is a 13-year-old girl named Kelli.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the other is her mom, Sandra Burris. Although,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you walked into any bar or club
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: in town and asked for Sandra, you'd get complete blank stares.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Right, because everyone there knew her as Cash.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So it's supposed to be this completely routine evening.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You know, Kelly is heading off for a fun overnight
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama with a friend's family.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: And her mom is just planning a standard night out
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: in the neighboring town of Opelousas.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Right. But as the car pulls up for Kelly... She
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: looks up at her mother to say goodbye, and what
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: she sees just, well, it stops her cold.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is this look of pure, unadulterated terror on
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Sandra's face.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Yes. Kelly would later describe it as a look she
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: had literally never seen before in her life. It was
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: as if her mother was staring down the barrel of
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: something inevitable and horrifying.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: It's that gut-wrenching feeling, you know?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: When you just know something is wrong, even if you
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: can't articulate why.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally. That profound dread just instantly fills 13-year-old Kelly.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, she actually begs her mom not to go.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: But Sandra brushes it off, right?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Like, she pays Sana a smile, says she'll be fine,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: and they part ways.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Sandra Burris vanished that night without a single trace.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Which really brings us to the core mission of our
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: deep dive today. Right.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: We are opening up this incredibly messy, decades-old labyrinth of
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: case files, recanted witness statements, and jailhouse letters.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Our goal here is to deconstruct the mechanics of how
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: a human being can simply evaporate in a small town,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: especially one where everyone knows everyone else's business.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: We're going to look at how rumor mutates over time,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: how the legal system struggles with marginalized victims, and, well, why,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: after 20 stagnant years, this cold case is suddenly burning
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: hot again.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Let's start with that feeling in the driveway. Because Kelly,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: sitting in the back of her friend's family car, driving
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: all the way to Alabama, is just consumed by anxiety.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, I can only imagine. Kids are basically human radar detectors,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: They really are. They pick up on emotional frequencies that
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: adults just train themselves to ignore.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So true. So as soon as Kelly gets to her
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: hotel in Gulf Shores, she calls her mom's brand new
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: cell phone.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And Sandra always answered.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Always. But it just rings. And Kelly calls every single
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: day of that trip. Just nothing.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: And that silence is a massive behavioral red flag for investigators.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. To understand why, you really have to understand the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: complexities of Sandra's life. Based on the case files, Sandra
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: was a woman living, well, on the margins.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Right. She battled severe, unresolved depression. She was in and
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: out of rehab clinics. She actively used cocaine. And she
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: engaged in sex work to fund that lifestyle.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: But despite all that, she was known to maybe disappear
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: for a few days on a bender, but the anchor
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: in her life was her fierce protection of her daughter.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That is the absolute baseline behavior that investigators look for.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: No matter how dark things got, she constantly checked in
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: with her grandmother, Justine.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Right, who she and Kelly lived with in Port Bear.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: She was completely tethered to her family.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: But days go by, and she doesn't call Justine.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: So the family's trapped in that terrible limbo, you know,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: hoping she's just on a prolonged bender. Yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: They wait two agonizing weeks until finally, on August 8th,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Sandra's father officially reports her missing.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And the sheriff's jurisdiction brings in the Opelousas Police Department
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: to assist. But let's look at the mechanics of the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: investigation here. A two-week delay before the police even know
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: someone is gone.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate investigative handicap. I mean, there is
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: a tragic sociology at play here.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Well, when a person lives a transient or high-risk lifestyle,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: their families often delay calling the police. It's a mix
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: of assuming the person will eventually walk back through the
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: door and, you know, a general distrust of bringing law
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: enforcement into their lives.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Right. That makes sense.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: But mechanically, those first 48 hours are everything. Physical evidence degrades.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Weather washes away tire tracks.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Security footage gets recorded over.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And witnesses forget what day they even saw someone.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: By the time police start looking two weeks later, the
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: trail hasn't just gone cold. It has literally evaporated into
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: the atmosphere.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: So the police are already operating in the dark. They
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: start trying to retrace her steps and they go to
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: her best friend, a woman named Alberta Young.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Who goes by Candy, right?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Candy. The files show that on the day Sandra vanished,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: she met up with Candy. And Sandra had exactly $ 10
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: to her name.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: So they buy a 40-ounce beer, pool some cash to
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: buy $ 8 worth of cocaine, do laundry, smoke, and then
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: head to an area of Opelousas called The Hill.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Which is an area famous for its dense cluster of nightclubs.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So Candy leaves Sandra standing outside a club called Added Attraction.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: And she tells Sandra to wait right there. She'll be
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: back in an hour.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: But Candy never sees her again.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: But this is where the circle of last known contacts
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: immediately starts getting complicated.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, very complicated. Because a few days after that night
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: on the hill, Sandra's boyfriend of two years, a guy
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: named Dimmick, shows up frantically knocking on Candy's door looking
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: for Sandra. Right.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And when police finally interview Dimmick in August, he tells
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: them his timeline.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: He claims he last saw Sandra two days prior to
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: her disappearance at her job at Ryan's Steakhouse, right before
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: he left for a long stint of offshore work in
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: But Dimmick doesn't just offer his own timeline. He actually
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: points the finger at someone else. Right.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: He tells investigators that Sandra was absolutely terrified of a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: man named Kieran Alessandor who went by Kai.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: And the rumor on the street was that Kai was
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: involved in the murder of another man, Robert Rumbach.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the story goes that Sandra was either in the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: room when it happened or knew way too much and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: had been making some pretty reckless comments about it.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Psychologically, this provides a very compelling explanation for that look
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: of sheer terror Kelly saw in the driveway, doesn't it?
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. Was Sandra afraid Kai was coming to silence her?
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: It makes total sense.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: It's a strong theory until you actually cross-reference the timelines
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: in the public records.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Right, because local paper archives suggest that Kai was actually
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: sitting in police custody from early June through August of
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that year.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so if he was locked in the cell on
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: July 26th, the mechanics of him physically harming Sandra that
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: night just don't work out.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, but I really have to push back hard on
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: the police work documented in these files.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So Dimmick claims he has this impenetrable alibi, right? That
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: he was offshore on a boat in the Gulf. Yeah.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: But if you look at the case file, there is
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: literally no record of police ever calling his employer to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: verify he was actually on that boat.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: I know. It's frustrating.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And it gets much worse. The police do find one
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: tangible piece of physical evidence. Sandra's cell phone bill arrives
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: in the mail at her grandmother's house.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And it shows that four days after she vanished on
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: July 30th, two outgoing calls were placed from her phone
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: just after midnight.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. They were 43 minutes apart, each lasting exactly one minute.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: But to give some historical context here, we have to
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: look at the technology of 2005. Right.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Cell phone tracking data wasn't what it is today.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You couldn't easily pull historical GPS triangulation without a
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: major federal apparatus. For a local parish law enforcement agency,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: tracking a device that was powered off or bouncing between
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: rural towers was incredibly difficult.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, I understand the technological limitations of tracking a live
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: ping in 2005. But checking a paper billing statement for
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the numbers she dialed doesn't require satellite technology.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: It requires a pen, a desk phone, and basic curiosity.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: But there is nothing in the file showing they checked
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: who those midnight calls went to.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: They didn't even subpoena Demyck's phone records to verify the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: voicemails he claimed Sandra left him.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Right. It feels less like a lack of technology and
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: more like a catastrophic lack of follow through.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: That is a very fair criticism.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And it highlights the immense frustration of a slim historical
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: case file. Because we don't know if an investigator checked
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: those numbers and just failed to document it or if
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: they genuinely never dialed them.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Right. But the functional result 20 years later is identical.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: It's a complete dead end. The early leads with Dimmick,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Candy and Kai hit a brick wall.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So investigators are forced to pivot.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: They have to turn away from forensic evidence and wade
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: into the criminal underworld.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the dark, horrifying rumors that start
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: surfacing in 2006.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Imagine you're a detective, right?
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: And your traditional avenues are closed. Suddenly, letters start pouring
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: in from inmates at the local jail.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And the street rumor is that Cash, and the inmates
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: using her street name gave this some terrifying credibility, was
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: murdered because she refused to perform a sex act.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: The informants claim her body was wrapped in garbage bags,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: bound in duct tape, buried, and that a blood-soaked mattress
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: was set on fire to destroy the DNA evidence.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: It is a gruesome narrative, but it does inject two
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: new specific targets into the investigation.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And we are going to use pseudonyms for them, right?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Because they have never been officially charged. Yes.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: So we have a man we'll call Freddy, a local
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: businessman whose family owned a prominent landscaping and dirt-moving company.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: He was also known to run in local drug circles.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: And we have his employee, a man we'll call Marcus.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: So the police bring Freddie in for questioning.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: And Freddie plays a role. it completely cool. He sits
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: in the interview room and says he barely knows her.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: He claims he met Cash exactly one time, maybe seven
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: months before she disappeared. Just a casual passing acquaintance.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: But the investigators don't stop there.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: According to Major Mark LeBlanc of the Sheriff's Office, they
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: subject the employee, Marcus, to a polygraph test.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: And the examiner zeroes in on three highly specific questions, right?
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: First, were you in any way involved in the disappearance
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: of Cash? Marcus answers no.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Second, right now, can you take me to Cash? He
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: answers no. And third, have you seen Cash since March
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: of 2005? He answers no.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And the polygraph examiner determines that Marcus is being deceptive
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: on all three counts.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: All three.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: This is the part that makes you just want to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: pull your hair out. A suspect sits in a chair,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: gets asked, can you take me to her body right now,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and fails the test.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: To a layperson, that is a blaring, deafening smoke alarm.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: You know there's a fire. Why does a guy fail
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: a question like that and get to just walk out
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: of the police station and go home?
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: It's infuriating. I get it. But... We have to separate
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: the concept of a polygraph from the concept of a
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: magic truth-telling machine.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Think of a polygraph as measuring a person's emotional temperature,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: not reading their memory. It tracks your fight-or-flight response like
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: heart rate, respiration, skin conductivity.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So if you are terrified, the machine spikes.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And because of that, courts do not recognize polygraphs
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: as objective facts. Legally, it is just an investigative tool.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So it's essentially just a prop to try and force
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: a confession out of him.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Pretty much.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And because Marcus didn't confess, the police hit the wall
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: of the Fourth Amendment.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Which means?
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Well, to get a search warrant to go tear up
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Freddie's landscaping business looking for a body, police need probable cause.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: A judge requires an affidavit filled with verifiable facts.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So jailhouse rumors from inmates looking for a plea deal,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: combined with a failed stress test from an employee, that
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: just doesn't meet the legal threshold to secure a warrant.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Without a crime scene, without a body, and... Without
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: a legally binding confession, the police were completely handcuffed. Wow.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: And so, predictably, the investigation goes dormant again. It just
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: sits there until around 2007 and 2008, when the social
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: dynamics of the town start to shift.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: And people start stepping out of the shadows.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like Candy, Sandra's best friend who left her at
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the club. She ends up in jail on drug charges.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: And while she's locked up, she calls the police with
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: new intelligence.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: She tells them about a woman we'll call Mary.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Right. Candy says that in the summer of 2006, Mary
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: was giving her a ride, and out of nowhere, Mary
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: confessed to being at Freddie's house the very night Sandra died.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: And Mary's version of events is disturbingly specific. Plus, it
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: introduces a completely different mechanism of death than the jailhouse rumors.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: What did she say happened?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Well, Mary claims that she, Sandra, Marcus, and Freddie were
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: all at Freddie's house, actively cooking drugs. During this, someone
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: injected Sandra.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: And Candy told police she instantly believed this detail, right?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Because Sandra had a huge phobia of needles.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. According to Mary, Sandra had a violent, terrifying medical
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: reaction to the injection. She started freaking out.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: And in the ensuing panic, Mary claims Freddie strangled Sandra
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: to quiet the situation down. And then Marcus dug the grave.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: But there is a massive catch to this whole story.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: There always is.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Mary completely refuses to talk to the police. She only
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: told Candy out of a misguided sense of loyalty, thinking
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: a best friend deserved to know the truth.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So investigators are trapped in this agonizing game of telephone.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Until 2008, when Detective Donald Thompson, known locally as D.T.,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: gets summoned to city court. Right.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: A totally new witness is there offering a massive tip.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: This woman claims that Freddie buried Sandra out on a
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: specific piece of property near Deo Road.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: This gives Detective Thompson something actually actionable. He goes out
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: to the Deo Road property and secures consent from the
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: landowner to search.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: What's he looking for exactly?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: He's looking for the forensic hallmarks of a clandestine grave. Usually,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: even years later, you can spot disturbed earth, changes in vegetation,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: or like a slight depression where the soil has settled.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So he surveys the entire accessible area.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: But finds nothing.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: But while he is out there talking to the landowner,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: he uncovers a detail that is honestly just cartoonish in
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: its dark audacity.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is wild.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: It turns out that Freddie, the primary suspect, whose family
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: literally owns a dirt moving company, had used his heavy
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: machinery to dig an entire actual lake on that exact
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: property right around the time Sandra vanished.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It is a level of supervillain logic that almost defies belief.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: It really does. You don't just bury a body. You
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: use your professional landscaping equipment to change the actual geography
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of the earth and build a recreational water feature over it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly illustrates the logistical nightmares of a cold case.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Think about the tragedy of timing here. By 2008, three
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: years had passed. Searching a fully formed, water-filled lake on
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: a piece of property that doesn't even belong to your suspect,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you would need to drain the lake, dredge the bottom,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: and sift through tons of mud.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Which, without a hyper-specific warrant, which they still did not
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: have the probable cause to secure, is legally and physically impossible.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: The trail was literally buried under tons of water and earth.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So the files just go into a box. The years
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: turn into a decade. And then almost two decades.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the modern day.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And back to Kelly. I mean, think about what it
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: takes to grow up carrying the weight of your mother's
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: unsolved murder.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Kelly grew up way too fast.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: She did. She had to shield her younger sister from
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the reality of the dark world their mother inhabited. And then,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere in 2017, Kelly receives a Facebook message
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: from a complete stranger.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: An unsolicited digital message that essentially forces the entire investigation
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: back open.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: This stranger tells Kelly he has spent years trying to
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: track her down online just to deliver one specific piece
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: of information.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: What did he write?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: He writes... I know what happened to your mom. I've
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: known for years. And the man who did it is dangerous.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: He tells Kelly that a man named Richard, another pseudonym
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the police are using, confessed to him and listened to
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Richard's alleged confession. He says that he and Sandra went
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: back to his place, they did a massive amount of cocaine,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and Sandra started violently freaking out.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: And Richard told this stranger, quote, I had to do it.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: I just had to do it. I had to kill her.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in Kelly's shoes for a second. You are
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a civilian. You suddenly hold a confession implicating a dangerous,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: potentially murderous individual who is still walking around your area.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Understandably, she is terrified.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: She keeps this message a secret for years. Yeah, it
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't until recently, when investigative reporters began knocking on doors
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and asking questions about the case again, that Kelly finally
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: felt a window of safety.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: She brought this digital evidence to the St. Landry Sheriff's Office.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And it was the exact spark they needed to officially
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: pull Sandra's case out of the archives and reactivate it.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Let's do some analytical dot connecting here, though, because this
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: is where the psychology of memory and rumor gets really fascinating.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Look at this new 2017 confession from Richard and lay
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: it right next to Mary's story from back in 2006.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: They are eerily identical in their structure.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: They really are.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: In both versions, you have Sandra doing heavy drugs. You
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: have a sudden, intense, negative physiological reaction to those drugs.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Right. And you have a suspect panicking, realizing they can't
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: call an ambulance without getting arrested, and committing a murder
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: just to quiet her down. And that structural overlap is
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: exactly what seasoned investigators hunt for in cold cases. It's
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: what gives a street rumor actual investigative weight.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: So the actors in the play changed, like Freddie versus Richard.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: but the core mechanism of the tragedy remained completely intact.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. This is how the truth survives the decay of
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: time in a criminal ecosystem.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. As a story is passed from person to person
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: over two decades, the specific identities might get swapped out
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: or confused to protect certain people.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: But the visceral reality of how the event unfolded, a
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: drug reaction leading to a panic-induced murder, that survives the
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: telephone game.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: It's incredible to think about the passage of time. Kelly
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is 33 years old today. That is the exact same
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: age her mother was when she stood in that gravel
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: driveway and vanished. Wow. And despite all the darkness in
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: these files, you know, the drugs, the sex work, the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: underworld elements, Kelly doesn't remember a statistic. She remembers her mom.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: She remembers a smart, funny, deeply loving person who tried
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: desperately to shield her kids from the worst parts of
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: her reality.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And today, Major LeBlanc has confirmed they are actively hunting
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: down these new witnesses. They are knocking on doors again.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: It is living proof that a cold case without a
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: body does not have to be a closed case.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It absolutely does not. But as we step back and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: look at the totality of this labyrinth, there is a final,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: highly unsettling psychological possibility we really have to consider.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the part that really gets to me.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Have you ever tried to keep a massive secret in
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: a small town?
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: It is almost impossible. Right.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Now, factor in that we have two distinct confessions from
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: two different men, Freddie and Richard. Both confessions involve Sandra
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: having a bad drug reaction. Both involve a panic.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: What if we aren't looking at two competing theories? What
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: if both stories are entirely true?
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Wait, how could they both be true?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Well, think about the culture of drug houses. There are
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: rarely solitary environments.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: What if Richard, Freddie, and Marcus were all in that
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: room together when the drug reaction happened?
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: It's entirely possible that 20 years of conflicting rumors haven't
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: been lies at all. Instead, it might simply be the
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: guilty parties pointing the finger at each other in the dark,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: each mutating the story just enough to minimize their own
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: role and save themselves. Wow. That is haunting.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: The idea that this entire 20-year telephone game was just
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a circle of killers telling on each other, waiting for
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: someone to finally listen closely enough to put the pieces together.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The truth is in the overlap.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: We want to thank you for joining us on this
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: deep dive. If you or anyone you know has any
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: fragment of information about the 2005 disappearance of Sandra Burroughs,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: please contact the St. Landry Parish Crimestoppers.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And the next time you're standing in a driveway on
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: a humid summer night, saying what feels like a casual goodbye,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: just remember how quickly the geography of your world can change.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: And how a single look of pure fear can echo
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: for 20 years. See you next time.