This podcast is intended for mature audiences, listener discretion is advised. In 1986, after 12 years on death row, Billy Sunday, Berg's execution was stayed by the governor, meaning the death sentence would not be carried out as planned. Over the years, Burke would have eight separate stays of execution like this. The bittersweet story of how Stoney was allowed to spend eight hours alone with his father in his prison cell the night before the planned execution made me wonder how I would handle the same situation or could I even handle it what I say to my father?

I mean, think about it for a minute. What would you say to a loving parent, a husband or wife in the final hours of their life before being put to death by electric chair?

Enough times pass where I can maintain my composure when it catches me, when it sneaks up on me, when I get up in the morning to go fix me a cup of coffee. And I'm sitting there by myself completely day and all of a sudden this song comes on like precious memory or ache of pop song than I am. It hits me and I go back. That's what takes me out. That's getting to be less and less frequent. I'm able to compose and keep control of myself to the power of ten better than I was a year ago.

Over the next several years, Billy's relationship both with God and Sheriff Lee would continue to grow stronger. Lee would routinely make the drive to whatever federal prison Burt had been moved to and pick him up under the pretense of questioning him about murders in his county. In reality, it was so that Burt's family could spend time with him in the smaller local jail.

Lee oversaw all of that time the 20 times he'd already got my father from Marion Reedsville from out of Jackson.

Each time he went, he sent for the warden here. He needed him to talk to him about this crime or that grant and all that had to be done by sheriff them was simply sign a paper. Sheriff had that power seems a real day, but the sheriff had that power so he could take any comfort in the miracle from Charles Manson to Lubert to anybody else and simply say, I'm the sheriff of so-and-so, I want so-and-so and sign a paper and leave with the same day.

No paperwork. When he would go get him, he would keep it from one to four weeks and take it back. During the time that he had him in the Douglas County jail, he would go to directive's. He don't leave the cell phone. Hear anything you want to give to that. He's going to want fried baloney buttermilk and onions. Make sure we get plenty in the kitchen. They were saying, you know, during one of the many times Sheriff Lee brought Billy to the small jail in Douglasville, Georgia, Stoney asked if he could provide his father with a video camera in his cell to record stories and memories for his grandchildren so that in some way they might get to know him in the future.

Sheriff Lee obliged. What you're about to hear is actually Billy Sunday, Burt speaking, though Stoney clarifies what it is he's saying, as it can be very difficult to understand Burt with his speech impediment, Burt provides a very intimate look into his innermost thoughts and feelings as he reflects on his life and his many mistakes.

I love the man who failed to come down and I looked around and nobody hit me. How did that come about?

How long did it take a look around this little cell sometimes? And that when we're here a look around nobody but me. I guess I'm a whole bunch of mama, but, you know, it made me sick. I mean, just just. But I got nobody to blame but myself. I don't know. Well, yeah, you can't.

But no doubt. Because when you get so hooked on pills, don't eat. Yes or no, you don't give a damn about nobody, you stop. All you want is just. So who are the good or evil people, so I can put them, though. If I had never get on dope, I know for sure I would be here. You both know better that I don't start with you.

So anybody that you know is going to change your mind. Don't make you do things that you know wrong, you just can't blame it on the head. Blame it on yourself.

Get give up then.

But if I was out now, I would slap the flying hell. Anybody I'll miss out dope in can or it ain't nothing but a damn party. And how you doing? Hurt yourself. Hurt your family. So in a way I blame me though. But it's my fault for taking that damn dope I knew better.

And at the end of the day, I love being with you again.

How do you think for 17 years I should have missed a whole lot better with you.

All my kids, grandkids growing up.

I don't know just who is going in it, but I've been very lucky to have them that I got for you.

I've been to see me. Yes. Be real nice to meet people.

Family, forget about them. Manhattan. My whole family just been just very nice to me. I don't know.

I really do love this. And I'd give anything out in the world if I had all money in the world, I'd give it all just to be home, just to be home. We suppose that should just tell you something right there. I did everything I did, I did for money, do nothing just for money.

But now if I had all the money in the world, every penny, and they tell me, Burt, you could go home, just give up all the money I'd give them, I wouldn't spend another day in prison. His little jail cell for all the money in the world. I don't have a choice now.

So sometimes I just met my own damn self just just being a damn fool.

And I've been finding out more about it than anyone. I've given up the whole. The lessons be taught in his videos were not just for his grandchildren, but for his children, who he felt he abandoned when he went to prison. It was during one of these many visits when Sheriff early brought Byrd back to Douglasville that he would put it all on the line for his friend, he would risk his reputation and his career to help Burt see the light and ask forgiveness for his sins properly in the eyes of God.

So Sheriff Lee comes to the father and the father brought to his office. That's when my father told him about the dream of the 60s and the and the visions of 80 for who he estab and that, yes, as of last week's gone had been tugging at him. If that conversation is private between them, what was it? I don't know. But Mr. Lee come to the conclusion that it was his job as a Christian to see this through. So he said, OK, Bill, I won't take you to be baptized.

I want you to tell me, do you want it or you want to? And my can sit for two days. And when he talked again, he told him, Don't you have a pond? Didn't you tell me he had a pint? You have six years to do. He said, take me to your pond about this. I don't want it to be public. I don't want the media involved. And Sheriff Lee told me, he said, Billy, I don't feel right doing that.

You need to be baptized in the house of God. Now, listen, you can pick any church you want here. If you don't have a church, well, then you come to my church. So my father had that considered the investment orses, I'll not be baptized, but my son, who's been an ordained minister for less than a year right there in The Whitechurch, cheerfully said no problem. So he called me, told me to bring my mother coming the next day.

We got there, Sheriff Lee broke it down to us, we were just flabbergasted. This is news, this. My father never played with religion, he never would, never was an issue he didn't believe in. Most people who go to prison to become born again Christian is all bullshit to him. He have no part of. But clearly, something was changing and Billy, Burt, whatever it was, he felt that God was speaking to him and once again offering him a chance to be saved.

He wouldn't be foolish enough to decline that offer a second time, but I could tell that he was sincere. And he wasn't embarrassed about it, he was nervous about it because, let's face it, he'd been in prison now to 18 years when you were in solitary for 18 years.

And also and you're going to be thrown out of public, especially if something is draining from the devastation in Georgia history to a man being baptized. That gives you cause ripples, you know, so. Yes, that's what we think, that I was happy I did. I'm so happy I can't tell you because I've seen it was real. It was no games to play. He knew there was never a chance for parole. He knew that.

And so did Mr. listening to this story unfold. I can't help but think, why would Sheriff Lee, an upstanding, honest lawman, bend the very law he was sworn to uphold and risk his reputation and illustrious career to help a murderer? But as a devout Christian, Lee felt it was his duty as such. For in the eyes of God, everyone deserves the right to ask forgiveness. Sheriff Lee saw something in Billy, whether he wanted to or not, that made him want to help him get as close to right with God as he could.

From Imperative Entertainment, this is in the red clay. Well, he wouldn't be breaking the law, he was stretching it to the furthest ports of hell, he said he didn't care what happened to him there. He was listening to what in his words, in his mind, his heart, God had told him to do. This might be the only time I've ever heard of Sheriff Lee talking about this, because Sheriff Lee, for lack of a better word, was Wyatt Earp.

There was no flimflam in the guy. There was no marshmallow in him.

He was a a pillar of the community and a standard for a sheriff who would not tolerate one single. He wouldn't racialize himself into breaking the law for anything. He was only reachable. He was not for sale. Nothing could stop him from being a lawman. Nothing could change his morals. I found out later he was as much of a Christian as Lomi. The whole town already knew this. We did. Mr Lee said, Let me make this very plain.

This this must have been a wisdom middle of the week. He says if this gets out, he will lose any chance. He has been baptized in the House of God, and that would be a terrible scene in my way.

I think it's imperative that neither of you tell a living soul nor his sisters, not nobody, because if it gets a one person shows up or one just news, he's going to be baptized in a cow pond.

And that would be a tragedy. So we kept a secret.

Church is just so small that the hundred two thousand twenty thousand square foot small church, one front door, a basement for Sunday school, a steeple, the epitome of a small town, 50 to 150 congregation member church made a red brick.

Been there about 40 years long.

History as a apostolic. The evangelical church is home, as you can imagine, there's just as many people dressed in very well pressed blue jeans, white shirts as they are since church attack, poor people.

So on Sunday at five, 30 people cheerfully pulled up in one car, two of his most trusted men dressed in suits like they're going to church.

He was the only one that had his uniform pulled up in there, walked him into the church, a pair of black pants, a white shirt.

He let me go by. No one at the church knew what was happening or that Burt would be there until he arrived, Stoney rented a camcorder to record a video of the baptism, and he kept the film rolling the entire time.

One of Stoney's brothers who had recently become an ordained minister, if you can believe it, would perform the baptism on their father, had no shackles and no restraints whatsoever, simply a pair of dress shoes, black pants, the white shirt, as if he was come to church and then planned it that day and come from Sunday dinner. Could have been a man straight off the street, could have been could have been the grandpa or the father or the brother or anyone in there.

There was no law enforcement. The only thing that gave it away was Sheriff Lee in uniform. You heard that right, Bert?

The most dangerous man in Georgia history, the man who had killed over 50 people, was brought to the church with absolutely no restraints of any kind.

They just walked in the back door. Church had just started. And I never forget a young guy. His name was Ferguson. He was the grandson of the elder preacher of the church.

He was singing a song called The Lighthouse Of. It was a beautiful song. That song was playing as he went down, down, and it just seemed to fit.

And to this day I can play that song here. My whole family hears it and we just go back that time.

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Subscribe to even the rich on Apple podcast Spotify or listen ad free on the Wonder app. Anyway, he walked in Sheriff Lee and his pistol as well, one to the left, one to the right, the back of the church stood there like those at a funeral or something in suits, Sheriff Lee.

He walked down to sit on the front pew to the left. My father walked for 30 feet from a sit down between my mother. And that's when people started looking.

Now they continue to have church for 20 minutes, and by this time the whole Hey Howard delegation was about to bug out, you know, with curiosity and oh, and all that goes with it.

After 20 minutes of him sitting on the pew, all the grandkids sit in his lap, all that stuff, and makes daily recording. Pastor Baker, the pastor of the church, speaks so says to his congregation, We have a special event that we have built here with us in his home town where there noting, you know, they have a very unusual event, bit of birds here to be baptized. I want this I want everybody to make you feel welcome.

And what y'all he said, I don't remember, but.

Tonight. God, guys performed a miracle. There's a man here that I had never met. By the time he says, Tony, can you and your brothers bring you that old down? Stoney and several others began to parade Bert down the center aisle of the small church, he would change out of the black dress pants and neatly pressed white collar dress shirts. Tony bought him for the occasion into his prison uniform for the baptism so that he wouldn't get his clothes wet.

The audio you're hearing is from the recording Stoney made. This has never been heard outside of the Burke family before. This is big and families here tonight. Gotch reached out and touched his family one by one, he touched you.

Tonight, he's here is Brother Baker. Myself and my brother escorted my father to the back to help him get rid of his baptism. There was a visiting evangelical preacher there who had no doubt that this is going to happen and he is just as much as anybody. So all the music is playing in there. You know, most time when you do the baptism, want to get rid of their playing hymns and and people are praising with this preacher who was visiting when he realized what was going on.

Looking back on it, give one hell of a sermon. I bet he's made twenty five hundred sermons at it when he comes to his grips with what was going on. He let it roll the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and wonder God will continue to move.

Hallelujah. It's not going to be long till I believe that God's going to feel this place up with hearts and souls. Hey, man, I don't care who it is. There might be some people have problems with things, but I want you know, I don't care who it is in need of repair, find God and be saved in this idea that we are living. A lot of people have dictated that they want to be pretty churches and they want this and that.

But I'm telling you, God's looking for somebody to save, but our hearts being open, right? That God save the Queen and the Lord is this because what's taking place tonight does not happen? It does not happen. This is something that you do not like a practice. But you know what? There's a God. That we serve, that is an authority above all. Hey, man, I think the more that we have this opportunity tonight and I ask not that you would stand in front of the baker after we get undressed now, Brother Baker, come back out.

There were several in front while we were getting ready there in the back with no supervision whatsoever.

Brother Baker. So, Sheriff Lee, would you mind in a few words while we get ready, Sheriff Lee got to what the Bulls saying he did. I like Sheriff Lee to say a word here tonight he made about this man, I'm that only Part 12, 1975 during my work later I met his family and got better acquainted with them and learned during the conversation I had with Byrd, he told me about an affair he had with Ward. I'm going to try to push religion on all the years I've met him, he said one man in line.

And then I'd come over and said, I I'll have to do is reach out and the Christ would take care of me and he wouldn't do it. He said he thought the devil had run out on the road.

And when he brought my father to be baptized, Sheriff Lee stood at the front in tears, contentedly streamed down his face the whole time this morning, he didn't cry, but tears streaming down his face. I thought he was tears of joy. I think in his mind he was doing God's work. My brother was getting baptized and he stopped when he stopped and he reached into his pocket, stretched on his chest and he pulled up.

So he had big hands. Let me see what it was. What Billy pulled out of his breast pocket was a small Polaroid picture.

He looked at it and you see the lips move and he put it to his chest like this right here, put both hands over and nodded, OK?

And my brother baptized your faith in remission, you're saying? I do think that I do think baptize you. Oh, Jesus Christ. When you come by the water, he looked at picture and he talked to it again. Nobody knew what the picture was and he put it back in his pocket. I could wait to find out what that was.

My father had a whole demeanor different before he wanted to or he come out from under the water before you see in his eyes, he had he was really out of there. He could be anywhere there because after 18 years in solitary, all these people, he 10 times really been in that camp on.

On September six, 1992, the notorious gangster hitman murderer, Billy sun-Baked was baptized, to our knowledge, something like this had never happened before.

And thanks to several laws being changed directly due to the way Sheriff Lee took Byrd out of federal prison for the baptism, it will likely never happen again.

True features the often weird but always true stories of strange events and unforgettable moments.

Each episode explores unusual, obscure, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy stories, stories that are so bizarre that you won't believe that the real. But they are because, yeah, they're true.

Listen and subscribe to True right now on Apple podcast or wherever you get your favorite shows.

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A good night's sleep is essential for keeping our mind and body strong, but it's not always an easy thing to get, especially now. Visit audible dotcom sleep for soothing audio experiences to let you meditate. Also free right now for everything audible, go to audible dotcom ears or text ears to five hundred five hundred. That's audible dotcom ACARS or text SARS to five hundred five hundred. Well, the church had a big praise and ceremony there. I took my father out there getting dressed in white shirt, brought him back and give me his his Jackson uniform.

First thing I did was took that. And it was a picture of his mother, the kind of picture that used to take all those cameras that spit the picture up.

So he took his mother under with him. The one that named Billy Sunday after the event with the preacher, she named a bit of sun. She tried to raise him to follow that path. She always know there was goodness in him. And I think he was. Just. I don't know how are you thinking or are hoping she was there seeing it or whatever, it was very important to him that she be present with him when it was that.

I ask Stoney if he knew what his father whispered to the picture of his mother kept in his breast pocket. Got no idea. It don't really matter, you know what it was? It was precious, the mother son.

It's just too precious. It's too too sentimental is too private. But when the pastor, Brother Baker, asked him if he had anything like say I asked him say no, Bashar. And I'm telling you, I don't know what happened to him. When they when they when he said, yeah, he wound up on that.

Preacher's pulpit, he talked this plane is a good man, a man or anything, I want you to know tonight that God is in the same image and that's what we're doing here tonight. I ask it if it's all right. I'm going to call this brother bird. Amen, brother baby bird back here, senior. I'm going to ask him to come ask if you wish to say some words, and he does. I will tell you, though, I don't know if I can tell you what he said when he come out.

Let me just let him talk. First place. Come right here is one blessing. You will understand me. I want to thank, but I don't know. But I know that. But I'm not right to be here if I have been a black man right here already.

I don't want to take my word for the fact that he thanked the church for having him there because he wouldn't worse worthy of being in the dorms. He thanked Jesus for giving them the chance to say this.

So he thanked Jesus for coming to him the night he was supposed to kill Sheriff Lee and stopping him.

No, I don't think they have that man in the way. You can't stop me from here. And I want to thank you for doing that.

And he thanked the crowd for writing a letter eight or nine years previously, telling them about the word of God and no soul was unsalable, told that doctor that was standing in the crowd that he'd read that many, many times had been a big influence on him for campaign, but not the Klan.

You remember when he wrote me back in my own time, but now that will be it will take time and I won't ever want to go to the church, he said.

Y'all might not know this. And he told me, he said, Well, I know you don't know it.

I never thought about it, but I don't think I'll tell you how come you might not know it? I mean, I know you don't know it. I'll never know. But 1972, I will pay you to tell me why you are not going to be going to church on Sunday night. And he changed church. He did some checking that he said, and something happened.

I didn't. And I want to thank Jesus for that. This man be here today. No, I'm not. Be here a so many people that would still be free if man had put more people away that need to be put away to any man instead of good Lord together again.

And he just taught this is plain, as I've ever heard him, and I've never heard him talk that plan before, after. So if you ask me, do I think the Holy Ghost, not in the sense that man, you have seen other people jump up, then talk in tongues. But when you talk about lot Bellbird, you can't speak in a bank and you come out of the water and you talk like a Philadelphia lawyer. To me, this talking in terms.

When the concert went, all that was over, the preacher said, OK, we'll let everybody stay because we have one more familial waiting in here.

This is you know, this is homecoming week. We have everybody brought a dish. And Sheriff Lee, you and your men are more welcome to stay. And we hope you stay with all what rutt down the hill, right into the gymnasium.

And as they made their way from the sanctuary to the small gymnasium, Sheriff Lee and Bert stood on the front steps of the church and each spoke a few more words, honest to God, help me try to tell that plan to compare this church to be baptized.

I got baptized in my barn, so I was going to find it, meaning, you know, about every one here showing that Jesus didn't know, that he didn't want to say he's trying to use the church. Getting to know what? I don't wanna know. I don't get out. Know what I mean? I don't know. The salvation is his soul. Chifley. I think I spent my whole family. When I tell you we all love you, I Donny.

I do you I love going to say them all.

About a year ago, you, Bert, sat with his family and Sheriff Lee, they ate together, joked and laughed together as old friends. Would he bounce the grandchildren on his knee? Told jokes. It was as if it was an ordinary dinner with friends and family. Bert still had no shackles or restraints on him.

I'm glad you weren't playing a role at all.

Kind of conversation. The camaraderie and the gestures and the banter that fall between them is such a good humored, good friendship. Fellowship, brotherhood sort of way is I can't I can't do it justice. I'm not going to try. And I never will forget. When the preacher asked Sheriff Lee to say the blessing, he said, Thank you, Lord, for the meat, Leslie.

Of course, being a bit of a jokester at heart quickly reminded people who he was, even though it was set in good humor while talking to the local undertaker who had become a good friend to the family, Billy jokes that the man better not make a move on his wife because I'd hate to have to break out of prison and come visit him.

The man simply said, Well, you think about this. I bury the dead, to which Billy replied. So I buried a few myself. And then he called, he said. And he said, But, but. But not no more wasted. We spent the next hour and a half down there, eight with all the camaraderie and all the people coming in. By the time we all walked down the gymnasium, you know, just getting twilight and everybody in that church and kid old person felt like they had no Billy all their life by that.

It was just like it was just like one of the grandkids had been baptized. It was just that. But it was a real spirit.

The sheriff early certainly felt the Holy Spirit. He offered to take Billy to visit his mother's grave before returning him to the jail.

They left the church at twilight. They got 20 minutes from the church, White Plains, where he's buried today, where his mother and stepfather, Pete, and all his brothers, sisters, everybody was dead. The family.

That point surely took him there to visit his mother's grave, who had died in eighty eighty six.

And he was able to bend down and spend time on his mother's grave and was able to talk to her.

And all that was recorded by Sheriff Lee's daughter.

And they gave it to, you know, get some flowers every. That first time I've been the first time I met him, yeah, I guess he spent 30 minutes in the church before Sheriff Lee took him and it had gotten dark. But the light of the camera let you see just enough to see everything.

I watched the dark, grainy video of Burt visiting his mother's grave.

And again, I wondered why the hell didn't they have any kind of restraints on not even handcuffs? In the video, the men are standing out in a dark cemetery surrounded by thick rows of trees on either side. It would have been easy for the other members of the Dixie Mafia to ambush Lee and his two men.

Burt could have escaped right there relatively easily. Sheriff Lee asked him, he said, Billy, I don't want to take you in the House of God strain's. I want you to give me your word, Ilchi, give me word that you won't try to escape if you do give me your word. You won't try to escape. I will. To. If you do try to escape, OK? My father said you got more cheerfully now after that, but then he was telling about this over his boys, I want you to always remember that if a man's word ain't no good, he's no good.

Sheriff Lee asked me if my word that I wouldn't try to escape. And make no mistake, he is a low man. He would he would blow me away, but he took the word and he bleep my word.

He said, if you get that, you are the richest man on earth. It seems the bond, the trust, the code of respect that early in Billy Burke had for one another was very much real. Burt was taken back to prison without incident. Sheriff Earl Daehlie would retire the following year, and the two men would remain close friends until his death in nineteen ninety eight. But Lee, even in death, would do one more favor for Billy Byrd, a last true gesture of friendship.

When Sheriff Lee died, my father was still on death row, Wayne Garner was the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, that is the highest position Department of Corrections in Georgia.

He ruled with an iron fist. Went to Jackson, Georgia, to the warden. He wanted to meet with Vinterberg. And they walked into the room, he said, Billy, we've lost a good friend this year, Mr. Brown.

Well, he said, Billy, Sheriff Lee made me promise him on his deathbed that do something, I'm here to do it. He said they've had you in legal limbo and the death penalty for a number of years now. Want to leave here? Are you going to be put in population means taken off death row, out of segregation and put in general population?

So you have the activities of working in heaven that need to be cut and grass working here, their kitchen, whatever, and you can attend church services and stuff like that. And you had a totally different business, one that you could actually touch each other.

Sheriff Lee asked me to promise him that I would have this done in order that you could attend church. He stayed in place until the day he passed. In 1998, Billy Burt was taken off death row and placed back into general prison population, even though he would still live under the same general security protocols as any other death row inmate. He would no longer be executed. He was to live out his remaining days in a cell. In the red clay is a production of imperative entertainment.

It was created, written and reported by me, Sean Qype and I wrote and created the original music score. Executive producers are Jason Hoak and Jeno. Falsetto story editor is Jason, who produced and engineered by Shane Freeman, Jason Hoak and myself, cover art and design by Gina Sullivan for Sessions recorded at three Sound Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. Archival footage licensed courtesy of Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia and WSB TV in Atlanta, Georgia. In the Red Clay is a 12 episode series with new episodes available every Tuesday.

Follow us on Instagram at In the Red Clay podcast. Have questions. Email us at Podcast's at Imperative Entertainment Dotcom. If you like the show, tell your friends and leave us a review. Thanks for listening.