Speaker 1: In the last episode, we began our deep dive into
Speaker 1: the story of Sharon Marshall. Today we continue that story
Speaker 1: with part two, so be sure to check out part
Speaker 1: one before carrying on with us today. But if you're ready,
Speaker 1: then let's continue the story.
Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
Speaker 2: and Grim, a true crime podcast. Warning.
Speaker 1: The following podcasts and material intended for a mature audience.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Your Weight is finally over.
Speaker 1: It's part two, Part two. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people try and they try and listen to both episodes
Speaker 1: in the same day at eight for it. Yeap, So
Speaker 1: if you're doing that, you're going for the binge. Hey,
Speaker 1: here we are. Even if you've been waiting for days
Speaker 1: to listen to part two, well, same thing. Here we are.
Speaker 1: I hope the weight was worth it. This is it's
Speaker 1: quite the tail. There is a lot of details, so
Speaker 1: it definitely needed two parts. I honestly I probably could
Speaker 1: have even done a third part if I really wanted to.
Speaker 1: Really probably, there is that much to this case.
Speaker 2: It's a really big one, it is.
Speaker 1: That's what she said.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, gracious, sorry, Okay, well, honestly, though, if
Speaker 2: you did listen already to part one, you may need
Speaker 2: a little bit of a recap. So do you got
Speaker 2: that for us?
Speaker 1: I do have a recap. Are you ready for it
Speaker 1: right out of the gate?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think we've been making people wait
Speaker 2: long enough. I'm on the edge of my seat.
Speaker 1: You don't want to talk about the weather today. Look
Speaker 1: at that frost out there. It's a frosty sunny morning.
Speaker 1: I could go on for at least fifteen minutes about that.
Speaker 2: Okay, I will just say the sun is nice. We've
Speaker 2: been lacking some serious son here lately, so I am
Speaker 2: into the sun.
Speaker 1: That's true. But I also think people are lacking a
Speaker 1: part two. So I think you're right. We should just
Speaker 1: get right into the recap.
Speaker 2: And not be little menaces.
Speaker 1: Not be little menaces? Yeah, all right, so let's recap this.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we left off with Sharon Marshall
Speaker 1: dead and almost no one understanding who she really was.
Speaker 1: We went through the story of a man named Franklin
Speaker 1: Delano Floyd aka Floyd. We were going all the way
Speaker 1: back to his childhood and he had a life that
Speaker 1: was marked quite early on by violence, abandonment and abuse,
Speaker 1: and we followed how that chaos turned into a long
Speaker 1: pattern of sexual violence, kidnapping, and escalating crime through his
Speaker 1: adult life. Now, despite his convictions for abducting and sexually
Speaker 1: assaulting a child, also with armed robbery and repeated escape
Speaker 1: attempts from prison, Floyd was released again and again until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, he skipped bail and disappeared completely, becoming
Speaker 1: a fugitive free to start over under a new and
Speaker 1: false name. Now that reinvention led him to meet a
Speaker 1: woman by the name of Sandra Brandenburg, a struggling single
Speaker 1: mother of four who believed she had finally found someone
Speaker 1: who could help her hold her family together. She married
Speaker 1: him with the high hopes, but instead, during a short
Speaker 1: jail sentence in nineteen seventy five, Floyd vanished with her
Speaker 1: children in tow. Now. Two of them were later recovered
Speaker 1: and reunited with their mother as they were quietly placed
Speaker 1: in adoption, but another one was placed in a private
Speaker 1: adoption situation and was never seen. The oldest was Suzanne
Speaker 1: Maurice s Vegis, and she was taken by Floyd and
Speaker 1: was never officially searched for because she was well taken
Speaker 1: legally by her stepfather because the two had married. Now
Speaker 1: from that point on, Suzanne was raised in plain sight
Speaker 1: under false identities to make sure that he could keep
Speaker 1: her hidden. She was taught that her mother was dead
Speaker 1: and that the man controlling her life was in fact
Speaker 1: her father. Over the years, those lies hardened into reality.
Speaker 1: Suzanne became Sharon Marshall, a bright, well liked student who
Speaker 1: looked on paper like a success story, even as she
Speaker 1: lived under constant fear, physical and sexual abuse, and control.
Speaker 1: As she got older, Floyd's grip didn't exactly loosen, it
Speaker 1: instead tightened. Friends noticed strict rules, odd behavior, and moments
Speaker 1: that felt wrong, but never quite crossed into something they
Speaker 1: could prove. When Sharon finally earned a full scholarship to
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech, it looked like her way out, but that
Speaker 1: chance disappeared when she became pregnant. The baby, however, was
Speaker 1: placed up for adoption, and college was quickly taken off
Speaker 1: the table, while Sharon stayed exactly where Floyd wanted her.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen eighties, Sharon was supporting Floyd and
Speaker 1: her new son, Michael by working as an exotic dancer
Speaker 1: in Florida. Floyd inserted himself into every part of her life,
Speaker 1: including the dancing, controlling her money and her movements, and
Speaker 1: even her body and appearance in public. When another dancer
Speaker 1: named Cheryl Anne Comesso challenged that control, the situation turned violent,
Speaker 1: and Cheryl vanished without a trace. Not long after. Then
Speaker 1: came the final chilling step. Floyd legally married the woman
Speaker 1: he had raised as his own daughter, using paperwork and
Speaker 1: aliases to erase decades of abuse in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the system. Sharon would have another child, and it too
Speaker 1: was placed up for adoption, and eventually they moved to Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: where for the first time she began planning to leave.
Speaker 1: But she did have another child that she got to keep,
Speaker 1: which was the one blessing in her life now. Even
Speaker 1: though she planned to leave, she never got the chance.
Speaker 1: In April of nineteen ninety, Sharon Marshall was found gravely
Speaker 1: injured on the side of the highway. After five day
Speaker 1: in intensive care, she died. Her death was ruled a
Speaker 1: hit and run, but there was some suspicion Her husband
Speaker 1: controlled access to the hospital room and things seemed to
Speaker 1: be a little off during his stay. I mean, she
Speaker 1: seemed to be on the men but then suddenly death
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere. No one knew her real name,
Speaker 1: no one knew her past, and the man responsible for
Speaker 1: shaping her entire life seemed to be at the center
Speaker 1: of it all. And that is where we left off.
Speaker 2: That alone. That seems like that should have been more
Speaker 2: than one episode. I know, right, because often when we
Speaker 2: do part two is your little recap at the beginning
Speaker 2: is half that length. So it's like, huh, yeah, this
Speaker 2: will be exact.
Speaker 1: This is an extensive case, to say the least, and
Speaker 1: each part on its own, you probably could break it
Speaker 1: down and do another like two parts per the each
Speaker 1: part we have, so you probably could expand and go
Speaker 1: for five six. I mean, depending how deep you go, right,
Speaker 1: there are books and documentaries this though I didn't read
Speaker 1: any books in my research. I did watch documentaries. I
Speaker 1: did read a lot of articles in doing some deep dives.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of info out there, a lot of
Speaker 1: info out there. Yeah, so depending on how deep you
Speaker 1: want to go, and I chose doing two parts, and
Speaker 1: I think I've done it justice in these two parts.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, yeah, so far you have so.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: I guess let's put you to the test for part two.
Speaker 1: Put me to the test for part two. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm ready for the test. Let's do it. After Sharon's
Speaker 1: death in April of nineteen ninety, Franklin Floyd did what
Speaker 1: he had always done when situations tightened around him. He
Speaker 1: leaned onto the paperwork at the hospital. He presented himself
Speaker 1: as Clarence Hughes, a grieving husband, and Sharon was now
Speaker 1: at the time legally Tanya don Hughes on paper, which
Speaker 1: of course was another false identity. It seemed like everything
Speaker 1: lined up. It was a husband and a wife, But
Speaker 1: when Floyd attempted to life insurance proceeds, the story began
Speaker 1: to fracture. Social Security numbers, for example, well they didn't
Speaker 1: match the names. Employment records also raised red flags. It
Speaker 1: seemed that the identity of Floyd what he was using
Speaker 1: it started to draw scrutiny, not because investigators suspected something
Speaker 1: like murder yet, but because the documentation simply didn't behave
Speaker 1: the way legitimate records should. Now, this obviously wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time Floyd had relied on aliases, but it was
Speaker 1: the first time the system actually pushed back hard enough
Speaker 1: to matter. So the questions were mounting, and Floyd decided
Speaker 1: to leave Oklahoma and placed Sharon's son, Michael, into state care.
Speaker 1: At first, this appeared to be a practical decision. Michael
Speaker 1: was just a toddler after all, and Floyd was facing
Speaker 1: the mounting legal pressure. But what authorities soon learned was
Speaker 1: that Michael arrived in foster care deeply traumatized. See Michael
Speaker 1: was not yet even two years old. He was nonverbal
Speaker 1: when he in the system, but he had poor muscle control,
Speaker 1: in severe emotional distress, and suffered from frequent hysterical episodes.
Speaker 1: Foster parents later described him as withdrawn and fearful, especially
Speaker 1: of adult men. Thankfully, with stability, routine, and patience, he
Speaker 1: began to improve slowly, learning to speak and gaining coordination
Speaker 1: along the way, all while forming healthy attachments for the
Speaker 1: first time in his life. Michael experienced consistency, but Floyd,
Speaker 1: he didn't disappear completely. In nineteen ninety, authorities finally confirmed
Speaker 1: that Clarence Hughes was actually Franklin Delano Floyd, a fugitive
Speaker 1: with an extensive and violent criminal history stretching back decades.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the social Security number Floyd provided which didn't
Speaker 1: cleanly match the life history he claimed. Red flags began
Speaker 1: popping up with authorities and it began to dig deep
Speaker 1: into them. Authorities attempted to verify this Clarence Hughes across
Speaker 1: state and federal systems, but the identity began to collapse
Speaker 1: under scrutiny. Investigators discovered that the social Security number and
Speaker 1: biographical details attached to Clarence Hughes overlapped with multiple identities.
Speaker 1: Now He was arrested for all this, but it was
Speaker 1: after fingerprints were taken that they actually matched him to
Speaker 1: his original identity of being Franklin Delano Floyd. But even
Speaker 1: though he was in custody, Floyd was processed through the
Speaker 1: system without the full scope of his actions being visible
Speaker 1: because no one still had any idea about Sharon Now.
Speaker 1: All the while Floyd cycled through the custody and release,
Speaker 1: Michael remained in foster care. By nineteen ninety four, Michael
Speaker 1: had been placed in foster care with Merle and Ernest
Speaker 1: Bean in Choctaw. Soon though, they began actually going through
Speaker 1: the adopting process, believing Michael deserved permanence after years of instability.
Speaker 1: As part of the process, DNA testing was conducted to
Speaker 1: establish paternity, and that is when they would confirm that
Speaker 1: Floyd was not Michael's biological father, even though he said
Speaker 1: he was. Now that single fact changed everything, because any
Speaker 1: remaining legal claim Floyd had over Michael completely collapsed. His
Speaker 1: request to regain custody was denied to the court. Michael
Speaker 1: was now a child free to be adopted, and Floyd
Speaker 1: was a dangerous non relative with no legal ground to
Speaker 1: stand on.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is really good because I was worried that
Speaker 2: he was going to get control of this little boy again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was trying, and well the system said no,
Speaker 1: you're not his father.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank goodness, the system work exactly now for Floyd.
Speaker 1: This was well not a bureaucratic setback. It was an
Speaker 1: existential loss, to say the least. See, even after Floyd's
Speaker 1: fingerprints exposed his real identity, there still wasn't enough on
Speaker 1: the table to keep him locked up long term. Even
Speaker 1: though Floyd had a long and violent criminal pass, the
Speaker 1: law couldn't hold him just for being dangerous. His earlier
Speaker 1: sentences were already served, his fugitive charge had limits, and
Speaker 1: Sharon's death was still officially an accident. So once the
Speaker 1: paperwork ran out, Floyd walked free, legally blocked from Michael,
Speaker 1: but not imprisoned. Now Michael was the last person in
Speaker 1: the world Floyd could plausibly claim as his own. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a legal guardian, but he was still that
Speaker 1: last attachment he had. Without him, there was no leverage
Speaker 1: or cover story that he could come up with, no
Speaker 1: emotional anchor to manipulate the system or other people. And
Speaker 1: as the adoption process pushed forward, while Floyd realized something else.
Speaker 1: Once Michael was legally adopted, he would be unreachable forever.
Speaker 1: So Floyd made a decision. On the morning of September twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, six year old Michael Anthony Hughes arrived
Speaker 1: at Indian Meridian Elementary School like any other first grader.
Speaker 1: He was living with his foster parents, who were still
Speaker 1: in that process of adopting him, and by all accounts,
Speaker 1: he was finally beginning to feel safe. His speech has
Speaker 1: improved and his behavior was stabilized, and for the first
Speaker 1: time since his mother's death, Michael had routine. That routine, however,
Speaker 1: was shattered shortly after class began this day, because Floyd
Speaker 1: he walked into the school that morning. First, without raising
Speaker 1: any immediate suspicion. He was calm and very purposeful, a
Speaker 1: man who knew exactly what he was there to do.
Speaker 1: He walked in and asked to see the principal, James Davis,
Speaker 1: and he waited for him quietly. When Davis met him,
Speaker 1: Floyd looked at him and partially revealed a handgun that
Speaker 1: he had on his body, and made his intentions very clear.
Speaker 1: He told the principle that he was there to take Michael,
Speaker 1: and that Davis well he was going to help him
Speaker 1: do it. Then made sure he told him too who
Speaker 1: if anyone resisted. Floyd said he was prepared to die
Speaker 1: to make it happen. So under duress, Principal Davis complied
Speaker 1: because he had no other option. You have a deranged
Speaker 1: man in a school with a gun with all these
Speaker 1: children around. The two men walked to Michael's classroom. As
Speaker 1: of course, Floyd had a gun on his body the
Speaker 1: entire time. The teacher was unaware that anything was wrong
Speaker 1: and was asked to send Michael into the hallway. Michael
Speaker 1: left the room, and Floyd then forced both Davis and
Speaker 1: Michael out of the building and into the principal's truck.
Speaker 1: As they drove away, Floyd dictated every single movement, every turn,
Speaker 1: every speed, every stop sign, and he directed Davis past
Speaker 1: the Bean family's home, which was Michael's foster parents place,
Speaker 1: and they drove onto a rural dirt road outside of town. There,
Speaker 1: Floyd ordered Michael out of the vehicle under the pretense
Speaker 1: of looking for a dog, and then he marched Davis
Speaker 1: out too, roughly forty to fifty yards into the woods.
Speaker 1: He handcuffed him to a tree, wrapped duct tape around
Speaker 1: his face, and there Floyd left the principle restrained in
Speaker 1: the heat, with no water and no way to move,
Speaker 1: and of course, with no certainty that anyone would find
Speaker 1: him either. After Floyd had left him behind, driving away
Speaker 1: in his truck, Davis managed to work at the tape
Speaker 1: around his mouth, and he got it loose enough that
Speaker 1: he was able to begin shouting. A nearby residence soon
Speaker 1: heard him and called the police. By the time Davis
Speaker 1: was rescued and authorities understood what had happened, more than
Speaker 1: three hours had passed since Floyd fled with Michael. Now
Speaker 1: those lost hours were extremely crucial, because no one inside
Speaker 1: the school realized that a kidnapping had occurred until long
Speaker 1: after Floyd was already gone. There had been no immediate lockdown,
Speaker 1: no alert to law enforcement, and no roadblocks, which means
Speaker 1: Floyd had ample time to leave the area and escape,
Speaker 1: and of course he did.
Speaker 2: Just making my heart just sink. I was not expecting this. No, no, Like,
Speaker 2: why can't you not just let the boy be? This
Speaker 2: is ridiculous? Really?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't say much right now because you give
Speaker 1: away the story, Like, what.
Speaker 2: The actual shit? Really? It just it's maddening. It pisses
Speaker 2: me off. I'm pissed.
Speaker 1: That's a respectable answer. I totally understand, Like, what the
Speaker 1: fuck are you doing?
Speaker 2: Like this is a child.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're directing your anger from me and
Speaker 1: not the story I'm telling. Yeah, because I think I
Speaker 1: felt when you said, what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 1: I think you were saying that to me.
Speaker 2: No, I wasn't. Are you sure I was talking about
Speaker 2: this Floyd.
Speaker 1: You're talking to Floyd?
Speaker 2: Okay, I was talking to Floyd, and Floyd. I'm done
Speaker 2: with Floyd.
Speaker 1: Understandable, I am too, trust me. Now. When police finally
Speaker 1: contacted Michael's foster parents, Merle and Earnest, they were blindsided
Speaker 1: in a very surprising way because the call came from
Speaker 1: the school, not about an emergency. It was framed as
Speaker 1: a routine question asking for Michael's caseworker. Only later did
Speaker 1: they actually understand the truth that Michael had been taken.
Speaker 2: Oh, that doesn't seem great.
Speaker 1: No, So when they did find out actually what happened,
Speaker 1: they were devastated but kind of not surprised at the
Speaker 1: same time because they they actually warned Social Services multiple
Speaker 1: times that they feared Floyd would make an attempt to
Speaker 1: take Michael. In fact, they even thought they saw him
Speaker 1: driving by their house slowly after he officially lost custody.
Speaker 1: There was a call to Social Services being like I
Speaker 1: believe it was a merle who made the call and
Speaker 1: asking Okay, what's what's Floyd's truck looked like? And they
Speaker 1: described the truck and like, yeah, we just saw that
Speaker 1: truck and someone inside driving by slowly. We believe he's
Speaker 1: kind of casing our house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's like, what are you supposed to do,
Speaker 2: because like, you want this little boy to have stability
Speaker 2: and go to school and stuff, right, So that's exactly.
Speaker 1: But there was also no protection because these this situation
Speaker 1: and others. Well, they were just dismissed as paranoia basically
Speaker 1: at the time. But the reality is these are real fears,
Speaker 1: and they had actually just materialized in the worst possible way.
Speaker 2: Well, and two, they're in the process of trying to
Speaker 2: get custody right, So I mean, if they stopped sending
Speaker 2: him to school or something right for his own protection,
Speaker 2: but there could be consequences for that, oh definitely. So gosh,
Speaker 2: they're like in a really tough position here for sure.
Speaker 1: Now. By the afternoon in September twelfth, nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: law enforcement and Choctaw were on the hunt after learning
Speaker 1: that the six year old child had been taken at
Speaker 1: gunpoint from an elementary school. However, they also knew that
Speaker 1: the kidnapper was not a stranger. He was Franklin Delano Floyd,
Speaker 1: a known fugitive with a documented history of violence, sexual assault,
Speaker 1: and child abduction. So within hours the case escalated beyond
Speaker 1: just local jurisdiction. The Federal Bureau of Investigation the FBI
Speaker 1: was brought in and retired Special Agent Joe Fitzpatrick was
Speaker 1: assigned as lead investigator. From the onset, investigators were racing
Speaker 1: against time. As many of us know In most kidnappings,
Speaker 1: the first forty eight hours are the most crucial, but
Speaker 1: this case carried a dangerous complication. Floyd was claiming to
Speaker 1: be Michael's father. Now that claim had, of course already
Speaker 1: been disproven legally, but it complicated early assumptions. And the
Speaker 1: reason that this is so crucial is because initially there
Speaker 1: was there was cautious hope that Floyd might keep Michael alive,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily, because they believe Michael still had value
Speaker 1: to him. But since Michael could potentially be taken away,
Speaker 1: proven to not even be his kid, well, that could
Speaker 1: pose a very scary situation, one where he may make
Speaker 1: it so no one could take Michael away and if
Speaker 1: he can't have him, then no one can kind of scenario.
Speaker 2: And he would be the type of person that's.
Speaker 1: Like that exactly. Special Agent Fitzpatrick's team quickly began digging
Speaker 1: into Floyd's recent history, not just as alias is, but
Speaker 1: his behavior, and what emerged was nothing short of alarming.
Speaker 1: It was a history we already know all too well,
Speaker 1: but for them, they were just learning it. And what
Speaker 1: came out of this was they learned he wasn't a
Speaker 1: man acting out of desperation. This was a man escalating
Speaker 1: as he always did. The FBI contacted the bureau's Behavioral
Speaker 1: Science Unit regarding the situation, and their assessment was blunt.
Speaker 1: They told them Floyd would not be able to keep
Speaker 1: Michael long term. He would simply become a liability to him. So,
Speaker 1: based on Floyd's history, agents were told they likely had
Speaker 1: about a week before they believed Michael would be killed.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, and they already like talk about pressure, they
Speaker 2: already would have had pressure. And then learning that.
Speaker 1: Exactly apbs were issued for the principal's truck. Agents flooded
Speaker 1: areas where Floyd had lived or previously traveled Atlanta, Phoenix, Louisville,
Speaker 1: and parts of Florida and Texas. Media coverage spread nationally
Speaker 1: and Michael's photo was broadcast on television and printed in newspapers.
Speaker 1: America's Most Wanted even featured the case twice. But this
Speaker 1: was nineteen ninety four. This was even before Amber alerts.
Speaker 1: There's no cell phone tracking, no traffic cameras, gas stations
Speaker 1: weren't blanketed with surveillance. And to top it all off, Floyd, well,
Speaker 1: he had a head start. Not only that he had
Speaker 1: decades of experience staying one step ahead of the system
Speaker 1: hiding so it looked bleak at best. Then, seven days
Speaker 1: into the search, the investigation took an unexpected turn. It
Speaker 1: was while retracing Floyd's pass that the federal agents began
Speaker 1: canvassing neighborhoods where he had lived under previous aliases, speaking
Speaker 1: with anyone who might still remember him now. During one
Speaker 1: of those visits, an agent knocked on the door of
Speaker 1: a former neighbor, and in their conversation this neighbor well,
Speaker 1: They showed him a photograph of the person that was
Speaker 1: their neighbor, and it kept for years. It was no
Speaker 1: an official record or evidence preserved by police, just a
Speaker 1: personal snapshot that had never been turned over to authorities.
Speaker 1: The image showed Floyd sitting casually with a young blonde
Speaker 1: girl perched on his lap. She appeared to be around
Speaker 1: five or six years old. The timeline made it impossible
Speaker 1: for the girl in the photograph to be Floyd's biological daughter,
Speaker 1: and at the time the picture was taken around nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, Floyd was either incarcerated or had no legitimate
Speaker 1: way of having fathered a child of any age. So
Speaker 1: soon investigators compared the child in the photograph to known
Speaker 1: images of Sharon Marshall, the woman who died in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety under the name Tanya Hughes, and the resemblance. Well,
Speaker 1: it was immediately difficult to ignore the bone structure in
Speaker 1: the face, the eye spacing, the shape of her mouth
Speaker 1: with her jaw, all of it aligned, and to agents
Speaker 1: reviewing it, this was not a vague similarity. It was
Speaker 1: the first concrete indication that Sharon had been with Floyd
Speaker 1: since early childhood. Now, remember, they still don't know who
Speaker 1: Sharon was. For investigators, the case shifted in an instant
Speaker 1: because they understood something chilling. Tanya Hughes had not met
Speaker 1: Floyd as an adult. Tanya Hughes was clearly Sharon, and
Speaker 1: it went back further. The woman whose death once seemed
Speaker 1: suspicious but isolated, was now instantly part of something much larger,
Speaker 1: a long term pattern of abduction, control, and abuse that
Speaker 1: stretched back decades. The case was no longer just about
Speaker 1: finding Michael. It was about uncovering who Tanya Hughes really
Speaker 1: was and what Floyd had been hiding in plainsight for
Speaker 1: nearly twenty years.
Speaker 2: How fricking confusing. Would that be? Hey?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Well about learning that. I don't even think I would
Speaker 2: be able to my brain would be able to comprehend that.
Speaker 2: I would just be like the shit.
Speaker 1: Well, and you have to remember too, Sharon isn't even
Speaker 1: her real name. She was under the identity of Tanya Hughes,
Speaker 1: and police are working on connecting her to the name Sharon.
Speaker 1: Now Sharon is still a false name, and they still
Speaker 1: need to connect that to Suzanne, which, trust me, I'll
Speaker 1: get into.
Speaker 2: The only thing is maybe it makes them feel like
Speaker 2: they have a bit more time. You know that he's
Speaker 2: planning to keep Michael and not necessarily be rid of him.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe. However, when you consider what happens next,
Speaker 1: echoes up the window pretty quick, okay, because thanks to
Speaker 1: the investigator's hard work. Floyd was arrested on November one,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, in Louisville, nearly seven weeks after he
Speaker 1: abducted Michael in front of his principle, and when authorities
Speaker 1: finally caught up to him. The moment, while it carried
Speaker 1: both relief and dread because Floyd was alive, but Michael, well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't with him. They didn't know where he was.
Speaker 1: From the beginning of questioning, Floyd controlled the conversation. He
Speaker 1: refused to give a straight answer about the boy's whereabouts,
Speaker 1: offering vague and contradictory statements that seemed designed to keep
Speaker 1: investigators engaged without ever committing to a verifiable claim. At
Speaker 1: the times, he implied Michael was living and being cared
Speaker 1: for by some rich person. At other moments, he suggested
Speaker 1: Michael's return might depend on legal consequences. He never provided
Speaker 1: a location. Though he never provided a name or detail
Speaker 1: that could be checked out to verify any of his claims.
Speaker 1: He just simply would not provide anything and said, Michael's fine.
Speaker 1: That's that. Behind closed doors, investigators were already confronting the
Speaker 1: grim possibility that Michael was no longer alive, but again
Speaker 1: Floyd wouldn't confirm it. Floyd's movements in the weeks following
Speaker 1: the abduction have been partially reconstructed through witness statements and
Speaker 1: travel patterns. Several people recall seeing a man matching Floyd's
Speaker 1: descriptions with a young boy at rest stops and convenience
Speaker 1: stores across Texas and Oklahoma. One witness described an encounter
Speaker 1: at a highway rest stop area where a child appeared
Speaker 1: withdrawn and distressed, clinging to the man but clearly uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Then the sighting stopped after that, No confirmed reports placed
Speaker 1: Michael with Floyd after the first several days of the escape,
Speaker 1: the runaway, whatever you want to call it. This aligned
Speaker 1: with the FBI's early behavioral assessment. Floyd's criminal history showed
Speaker 1: a pattern of escalating violence, impulsivity under pressure, and an
Speaker 1: inability to maintain long term concealment when a victim became inconvenient.
Speaker 1: Agents had been warned early that Michael's survival window was
Speaker 1: likely short. By the time Floyd was arrested in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: many privately believed that Michael was already dead. As the
Speaker 1: kidnapping investigation stalled, a separate discovery in the Midwest would
Speaker 1: crack open an entirely different part of Floyd's past, one
Speaker 1: that would ultimately own overshadow even the abduction of Michael.
Speaker 1: In March nineteen ninety five, in Kansas, a mechanic working
Speaker 1: on a previously stolen pickup truck that he had purchased
Speaker 1: at auction noticed something unusual during repairs. Wedged between the
Speaker 1: truck bed and the gas tank was a thick envelope
Speaker 1: carefully concealed. He opened it and inside were ninety seven photographs,
Speaker 1: some innocuous, but others were unmistakably disturbing. Many of these
Speaker 1: photos showed Sharon, but these photos didn't depict just her.
Speaker 1: Several of the images also depicted someone else, a woman bound,
Speaker 1: bruised and severely beaten. Her face was swollen beyond recognition
Speaker 1: in some frames, but there were some snapshots where you
Speaker 1: could see kind of what she would look like. This
Speaker 1: was clearly not an accident. These were clearly records of abuse,
Speaker 1: and investigators were notified and they quickly tracked the truck
Speaker 1: back to Floyd. He had stolen it in Oklahoma shortly
Speaker 1: after Michael's abduction and abandoned it weeks later in Texas.
Speaker 1: When detectives compared the photographs to open cases, one name
Speaker 1: resurfaced almost immediately, and that was Cheryl Ann Comesso. If
Speaker 1: you recall from part one of this story, Cheryl had
Speaker 1: disappeared in Tampa, Florida, in nineteen eighty nine. She was
Speaker 1: eighteen years old at the time and worked as an
Speaker 1: exotic dancers at the same club that Sharon Marshall did.
Speaker 1: Coworkers had witnessed a heated confrontation between Cheryl and Floyd
Speaker 1: outside the club shortly before she vanished. Cheryl and Sharon
Speaker 1: were great friends, and Cheryl was standing up for her friend.
Speaker 1: Floyd accused her of reporting Sharon for benefit fraud, an
Speaker 1: accusation that allegedly resulted in Sharon losing financial assistance. Witnesses
Speaker 1: later told police they even saw Floyd punch Cheryl in
Speaker 1: the face during the argument. At the time, suspicion existed,
Speaker 1: but the evidence didn't, and now there was photographic evidence
Speaker 1: that could be tied directly to Floyd himself. Not long
Speaker 1: after that, though, things got even worse. Skeletal remains were
Speaker 1: found in a wooded area off Interstate two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five in Penniless County, Florida. An anthropologist determined that
Speaker 1: the victim had suffered blunt force trauma and gunshot wounds
Speaker 1: to the head, and when forensic examiners compared the remains
Speaker 1: to the photographs recovered from the truck, the injuries aligned.
Speaker 1: The facial fractures were visible in the images, and they
Speaker 1: match damages to the skull. Clothing seen in the photographs
Speaker 1: also matched fibers recovered from the burial site, it seemed
Speaker 1: the case against Floyd for Cheryl Komesso's murder was no
Speaker 1: longer circum substantial.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, we all thought, but you hoped that
Speaker 2: that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: Hey, yeah, but it clearly was the case.
Speaker 2: What a complete piece of garbage this guy is. Like,
Speaker 2: it's it's just it's hard to just sit here and
Speaker 2: like listen to all the things that he's done.
Speaker 1: It's just it sums up and I've used this word
Speaker 1: so many times for so many people like him, but
Speaker 1: it sums it up really well with one word. He's
Speaker 1: a monster. Yeah, And imagine being in Cheryl's shoes. You
Speaker 1: are taken, you are beaten, and you know your life
Speaker 1: is on the line.
Speaker 2: And you already knew this guy was a complete.
Speaker 1: Asshole, right, but now he's sitting here taking photos of
Speaker 1: you when you're most vulnerable like this, and you know
Speaker 1: what it's about to happen, and he's probably reveling in this,
Speaker 1: laughing at this while he's doing this.
Speaker 2: Dang and yeah, she was eighteen years old. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then to hide them in like this truck like that,
Speaker 2: that is that's also just really bizarre to me.
Speaker 1: Well, he clearly the trophies to him, clearly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But generally you don't just like discard your trophies
Speaker 2: per se, do you.
Speaker 1: I don't think he discarded them. I think it was
Speaker 1: a matter of forgetting them there something like that, and
Speaker 1: lost them as.
Speaker 2: He's onto his next frickin' shit thing that he's.
Speaker 1: Doing exactly, and someone just so happened to run across them.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Now, as prosecutors prepared their case, investigators began reviewing the
Speaker 1: remaining photographs a little more closely, and what they found
Speaker 1: was deeply unsettling. The collection of photos depicting Sharon did
Speaker 1: not begin in adulthood. Some appeared to show her as
Speaker 1: a child, posed, exploited sexually, and photographed at various ages.
Speaker 1: Now that's as far as I'm going to go into
Speaker 1: the detail of those photos, but the timeline suggested years
Speaker 1: of documented abuse, beginning long before Sharon ever appeared in
Speaker 1: public records as a teenager in Georgia. This forced investigators
Speaker 1: to reconsider everything they thought they knew about Sharon Marshall,
Speaker 1: just as they did with the name Tanya Hughes, because
Speaker 1: she clearly no longer was just a woman who had
Speaker 1: died under suspicious circumstances in Oklahoma. She was no longer
Speaker 1: simply a victim of domestic violence either, not that that's
Speaker 1: a simple situation, but the evidence suggested that she had
Speaker 1: been in Floyd's control ever since she was a child, taken, renamed, moved,
Speaker 1: and hidden in plain sight for nearly two decades. And
Speaker 1: if that was true, then the question investigators had been
Speaker 1: circling for years suddenly became unavoidable. Who was Sharon Marshall
Speaker 1: before Franklin Floyd? Now as Floyd sat in custody awaiting
Speaker 1: trial for the murder of Cheryl Anne Camesso, prosecutors began
Speaker 1: assembling what would become one of the most disturbing evidence
Speaker 1: records many of them had ever handled. The photographs recovered
Speaker 1: from the stolen truck were foundation for this case, but
Speaker 1: they were only the beginning. Investigators traced the furniture, bedding,
Speaker 1: and interior details visible in the images back to a
Speaker 1: trailer Floyd had shared with Sharon Marshall and Florida. That trailer,
Speaker 1: they learned, had burned to the ground shortly after Cheryl
Speaker 1: disappeared in nineteen eighty nine. Fire investigators at the time
Speaker 1: ruled the blaze was intentional. It appeared to be an
Speaker 1: isolated arson case, but now this was more like evidence destruction,
Speaker 1: a cover up. Witnesses from the Tampa Strip club where
Speaker 1: both women worked came forward again, and this time with
Speaker 1: renewed urgency. They described Floyd's escalating control over Sharon, his
Speaker 1: frequent presence at the club, and the confrontation with Cheryl
Speaker 1: that occurred shortly before she disappeared. Several recalled Floyd openly
Speaker 1: blaming Cheryl for Sharon losing government benefits, a grievance that
Speaker 1: had clearly festered, and the physical evidence tied it all together.
Speaker 1: Forensic anthropologists compared the injuries visible in the photographs to
Speaker 1: Cheryl's skeletal remains. The fractures to her cheekbone and the
Speaker 1: skull were consistent with blunt force trauma seen in the images.
Speaker 1: The gunshot wounds when they matched the damage documented during autopsy,
Speaker 1: even the clothing photographed, while it all aligned with the
Speaker 1: remnants found near the burial site. By the time the
Speaker 1: case went to trial, the narrative was not really in question.
Speaker 1: Floyd had beaten Cheryl, photographed her injuries, shot her, and
Speaker 1: disposed of her body was pretty simple and straightforward. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, a jury would convict Floyd of
Speaker 1: the first degree murder of Cheryl Ann Camesso, and they
Speaker 1: also unanimously recommended the death penalty, and the judge agreed.
Speaker 2: Okay, wow, just like that. Hey yep.
Speaker 1: Now, as the courtroom focused on Cheryl's murder, investigators were
Speaker 1: quietly shifting their focus to the photographs that did not
Speaker 1: depict Cheryl. They were beginning to focus now on the
Speaker 1: ones that Sharon Marshall was in as a young chin,
Speaker 1: long before she appeared in any sort of other records
Speaker 1: with school or whatnot. The ages, as I mentioned, didn't
Speaker 1: line up with Floyd's claims of him being her father.
Speaker 1: The timelines didn't fit any known custody arrangement either, and
Speaker 1: no missing persons reports ever existed that matched her description
Speaker 1: for Joe Fitzpatrick and any other agents who had been
Speaker 1: involved since Michael Hughes's kidnapping. This was the moment the
Speaker 1: case fundamentally shifted. Cheryl's murder had been solved and Floyd
Speaker 1: would likely die in prison, but Sharon remain unidentified. No
Speaker 1: one knew who she was. She'd been enrolled in schools,
Speaker 1: she'd earned scholarships, worked under that name, Sharon married and
Speaker 1: died all without anyone ever knowing where she came from.
Speaker 1: There were no birth certificates, child medical records, confirmed relatives.
Speaker 1: She had lived an entire life on paper that appeared
Speaker 1: suddenly in adolescents and then was gone when she passed.
Speaker 1: Investigators began referring to her as the living Jane Doe
Speaker 1: because despite years of searching, no missing child case ever
Speaker 1: matched her age, her appearance, or her timeline. Floyd had
Speaker 1: clearly constructed a false identity that withstood scrutiny for decades,
Speaker 1: and now, with him facing execution and not talking, the
Speaker 1: chances of learning the truth seemed slim because he wasn't
Speaker 1: giving anything up for the first time. The case stalled,
Speaker 1: with two questions lingering long after the verdict. Who was
Speaker 1: Sharon Marshall And what really happened to Michael? Joe Fitzpatrick,
Speaker 1: the FBI agent who led the kidnapping investigation, retired without
Speaker 1: any answers to either. Sharon had lived and died under
Speaker 1: an identity that could not be verified, and Michael vanished
Speaker 1: without a trace. The case, in fact, might have faded
Speaker 1: entirely if not for an investigative journalist named Matt burke
Speaker 1: Beck see In the early two thousands, Matt was sent
Speaker 1: a photograph by a private investigator. It showed a man
Speaker 1: and a young girl sitting together. The note attached was brief.
Speaker 1: The man had kidnapped the girl, raised her as his daughter,
Speaker 1: married her, and later killed people connected to her life.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Matt burke Beck recognized the name immediately as Franklin Delano Floyd,
Speaker 1: and when he began making calls, he quickly learned that
Speaker 1: law enforcement shared the unease with this opened and endless case.
Speaker 1: The more that he dug the stranger, the case became. Now,
Speaker 1: this was before social media, but online forums like web
Speaker 1: Sleuths were beginning to attract amateur investigators who combed through
Speaker 1: cold cases, missing person databases, and unidentified remains. Cheryl's profile
Speaker 1: appeared on sites like dough Network and name us. Tips
Speaker 1: poured in, many unreliable, some thoughtful, but none definitive. Whateveryone
Speaker 1: agreed on was this Sharon had clearly been taken as
Speaker 1: a child, but from where. In two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Matt Birkbeck would publish his book on the story of
Speaker 1: his findings, titled as a Beautiful Child Laying out Sharon's
Speaker 1: life as completely as possible, her school years, her friendships,
Speaker 1: her intelligence, her fear of Floyd, and her death. The
Speaker 1: book unfortunately did not solve the mystery, but it did
Speaker 1: something just as important. It made Sharon impossible to ignore.
Speaker 1: Within months, people from around the world were trying to
Speaker 1: identify her. The renewed attention eventually reached the National Center
Speaker 1: for Missing and Exploited Children. By then, Sharon's case was
Speaker 1: considered a long term unidentified child abduction. There was no
Speaker 1: family advocating for her, no open police department pushing the
Speaker 1: case forward, and no guarantee that she had even ever
Speaker 1: been reported missing in the first place. Now they initiated
Speaker 1: a comprehensive case review, pairing sharon file with Michael Hughes's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Their conclusion was blunt Floyd was the only person who
Speaker 1: knew the truth, and if anyone was going to extract
Speaker 1: it from him, it would take a fresh approach. So
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, the FBI reopened both cases and assigned
Speaker 1: them to Special Agent Scott lab He was given limited
Speaker 1: time and resources, but he had one advantage his predecessors didn't.
Speaker 1: Floyd had been sitting on death row for nearly a
Speaker 1: decade at this point, with no visitors and no leverage left,
Speaker 1: so if Floyd was ever going to talk, this was
Speaker 1: likely the last chance. Special agent Scott lab approached the
Speaker 1: case methodically. He didn't rush to interview Floyd. Instead, he
Speaker 1: studied him. He watched every recorded appearance, every courtroom outburst,
Speaker 1: every fragment of footage that they had, and it all
Speaker 1: showed how Floyd behaved when challenged, and what he found
Speaker 1: was a very consistent pattern. Floyd responded to authority, but
Speaker 1: only when it was unmistakable. He needed to believe the
Speaker 1: person across from him had power and intended to use it.
Speaker 1: So to maximize their chances, the FBI paired Lob with
Speaker 1: seasoned interrogator Nate Furr. The two spent months planning the
Speaker 1: encounter together. They coordinated roles, appearances, pacing an even posture.
Speaker 1: This was not going to be a casual conversation because
Speaker 1: they knew they might not get another chance. And when
Speaker 1: the time finally came and Floyd was brought into the
Speaker 1: interview room, he was shackled and immediately hostile towards the
Speaker 1: two men that he assumed were lawyers to represent him.
Speaker 2: This is good shit, Hey, Like, yes, they're like preparing
Speaker 2: for like a almost like an acting role of sorts.
Speaker 1: You know, well, that's exactly what they're doing. They're making
Speaker 1: sure they know their role. Yeah, what they're going to do,
Speaker 1: how to act, how to feed each other, both of it,
Speaker 1: all of it.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's like glorious. Really yeah.
Speaker 1: But now he's sitting there and he starts shouting and
Speaker 1: ranting at them, and he refused to let either agent
Speaker 1: speak for nearly forty five minutes. They let him talk,
Speaker 1: They let him go off the rails. They let him
Speaker 1: do whatever he wanted say, yell, scream, whatever. They didn't interrupt,
Speaker 1: They didn't even correct him on the fact that he
Speaker 1: thought they were lawyers there. He thought they were lawyers. Sorry, right,
Speaker 1: They just allowed him to exhaust himself. And then finally,
Speaker 1: only them did Lob tell the truth. They weren't his lawyers.
Speaker 1: He's like, we are FBI agents and they're reopening the
Speaker 1: case on Michael Hughes's investigation. And the effect was immediate.
Speaker 1: Floyd stopped yelling, he leaned back in his chair, and
Speaker 1: for this first time, he started to listen. Now, Lob
Speaker 1: made it clear that this interview would proceed on the
Speaker 1: FBI's terms, and the FBI's terms, only they would tell
Speaker 1: his story or someone else would that framing it mattered,
Speaker 1: and it mattered most because Floyd had always wanted control
Speaker 1: over the narrative, and now, for the first time in years,
Speaker 1: he had an audience again. The interrogation unfolded slowly, as
Speaker 1: the agents walked Floyd through timelines he thought no one remembered.
Speaker 1: They asked about travel, roots, about aliases, about gaps and records,
Speaker 1: and eventually they focused in on Michael. At first, Floyd
Speaker 1: deflected it a little bit. He claimed that the boy
Speaker 1: had been upset during a drive after the kidnapping. He said,
Speaker 1: Michael cried and he said he couldn't calm him down,
Speaker 1: and as they pressed him though, Floyd's composure began to crack.
Speaker 1: He began crying, and he asked why they were doing
Speaker 1: this to him, framing himself almost as the victim in
Speaker 1: the situation. But that's the moment that Lob struck and
Speaker 1: he asked a very direct question. He looked at Floyd
Speaker 1: and said, how did you kill him? For a moment,
Speaker 1: Floyd said nothing, but then without warning, the tears stopped,
Speaker 1: and he said he shot Michael twice in the back
Speaker 1: of the head to make it quick.
Speaker 2: Seriously, I mean, at this point we kind of expected that,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: But yeah, jeez. And so just like that, the fate
Speaker 1: of Michael Hughes was finally known. He's dead. Floyd told
Speaker 1: them that he was driving towards Texas, knowing law enforcement
Speaker 1: would be waiting near the border. He admitted stopping, but
Speaker 1: claimed he didn't dispose of Michael at a rest area,
Speaker 1: say mess rest area where people had witnessed seeing him at,
Speaker 1: but he didn't dispose of him because people were watching. Instead,
Speaker 1: he drew a map for the agents and pointed to
Speaker 1: a remote location near an intersection along Interstate thirty five,
Speaker 1: where he said he left Michael's body. The search of
Speaker 1: that area followed, and forensic teams sifted through thousands of
Speaker 1: square feet of soil by hand, looking for anything a zipper,
Speaker 1: a shoe, a bone, a belt buckle, but nothing was found.
Speaker 1: Investigators later acknowledged that this well was most likely the
Speaker 1: situation where wildlife had destroyed what remained of the body,
Speaker 1: and that it probably would never be able to be recovered.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Now, as horrific as Floyd's confession was, it
Speaker 1: was not the interview's final revelation. As the agents pushed more,
Speaker 1: they began to ask about Sharon Marshall in her early years.
Speaker 1: Floyd began talking about Cherryville, North Carolina. He described himself
Speaker 1: as a bus driver and bragged about his appearance, and
Speaker 1: casually he mentioned meeting a woman at a truck stop.
Speaker 1: When asked what his name was at the time, what
Speaker 1: his alias was, Floyd answered, without hesitation, Brandon Cleio Williams,
Speaker 1: he said. In that moment, the agents froze, this was
Speaker 1: not a name no one had ever heard associated with
Speaker 1: Floyd before, and from there the story unraveled quickly. Floyd
Speaker 1: said that he met a woman named Sandy and began
Speaker 1: telling all about his past. But when officers stopped and
Speaker 1: asked who Sharon was, and I mean who she really was,
Speaker 1: Floyd simply told them without hesitation. Her name, he said,
Speaker 1: was Suzanne Sevecchis, and when asked where she was born,
Speaker 1: he answered Lavoyna, Michigan, September sixth, nineteen sixty nine. He
Speaker 1: also told them about the siblings, how he took them,
Speaker 1: placed them up for adoption, and just like that, Sharon
Speaker 1: Marshall had a real name Suzanne. Now, in Part one,
Speaker 1: I said I would be calling her Sharon because I
Speaker 1: believe both names are truly hers, and I do still
Speaker 1: believe that she grew up and lived most of her
Speaker 1: life as Sharon, and she made that name Sharon her own,
Speaker 1: even if a monster gave her that name. But for
Speaker 1: the remainder of this story, I do want to say
Speaker 1: I will be referring to her as Suzanne. That's her
Speaker 1: birth name, and that is when she truly was separated
Speaker 1: from the man that took her life. In this moment,
Speaker 1: when they discovered that her name was Suzanne, and I
Speaker 1: think that matters. So allowing her to be Suzanne again,
Speaker 1: I think is the best way to honor her. So
Speaker 1: that's what I will be doing.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty surprised that he just admitted this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he just spilled, But.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe that's what time will do. And these
Speaker 2: people came very prepared to get this information out of him.
Speaker 2: And there you go, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you had two professionals who know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: prepared for a long time, and you have someone who's
Speaker 1: just sitting there with nothing but time, yeah, to think,
Speaker 1: to wait, and no one's asking questions anymore. For almost
Speaker 1: a decade.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: So he finally gets another opportunity and he just says
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well I do like how they went about wording that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, if you don't tell us our story, we're
Speaker 2: going to basically make it for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell us your story or we're going to
Speaker 1: tell the world what we think.
Speaker 2: Yeah is wow? That is good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, once Franklin Floyd spoke the name Suzanne Maurice
Speaker 1: of Akis, the case accelerated in a way few long
Speaker 1: dormant investigations ever do. Within hours, agents confirmed that the
Speaker 1: birth certificate that he had described to them, with her
Speaker 1: name and birthday and all that it existed, that the
Speaker 1: dates line that the child had been renamed Sharon Marshall
Speaker 1: while she was born in Michigan on September sixth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. The discovery immediately reframed nearly every assumption law
Speaker 1: enforcement had ever made about her life. Suzanne had not
Speaker 1: come along in adolescence. She was in fact taken as
Speaker 1: a child, just as they believe these photos did depict.
Speaker 1: But the next question will it was obvious and uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: How did a five year old disappear without leaving a
Speaker 1: try how did he get Suzanne and no one looked
Speaker 1: for her? That answer led investigators to Sandra Francis Brandenburg,
Speaker 1: Suzanne's mother. At the time of Suzanne's disappearance in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies, Sandra was living in Cherryville, raising four
Speaker 1: children largely on her own. The circumstances surrounding that period,
Speaker 1: reconstructed decades later through interviews and fragmented records, paint a
Speaker 1: picture of instability and proved critical to understanding how Floyd
Speaker 1: was able to remove Suzanne from her life without immediate consequences.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, a tornado struck Cherryville and destroyed
Speaker 1: the trailer park where Sandra and her children had lived.
Speaker 1: The family was temporarily housed in a motel through emergency
Speaker 1: relief programs. Sandra was pregnant at the time, Deeply shaken
Speaker 1: by the disaster and struggling with what would now likely
Speaker 1: be recognized as severe trauma and untreated mental health distress.
Speaker 1: She eventually turned to social services, telling them she did
Speaker 1: not believe she was capable of safely caring for her children.
Speaker 1: But it was during this period that Franklin Floyd entered
Speaker 1: her life under the alias Brandon Cleo Williams. Sandra would
Speaker 1: later say they met through church, where she was visibly
Speaker 1: distressed and crying. Floyd presented himself as calm, stable and
Speaker 1: divinely sent to help her. I'm sure it must have
Speaker 1: seemed like a miracle to her. Like her prayers were
Speaker 1: answered on the spot, and within days he offered to
Speaker 1: marry her, and within only days more they were wed.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, he accompanied her to social services and secured
Speaker 1: the return of the children. Then, in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: as we know, Sandra was sentenced to thirty days in
Speaker 1: jail for passing a bad check. While incarcerated, she left
Speaker 1: the children in Floyd's care. When she was released returned home,
Speaker 1: the residence was empty. Floyd was gone, and so were
Speaker 1: the children. Through church run social services, Sandra eventually alone
Speaker 1: caated her two middle daughters, Alison and Amy. But Suzanne, however,
Speaker 1: was gone, and so was Sandra's infant son Philip. When
Speaker 1: Sandra attempted to report Suzanne missing, she was told Floyd
Speaker 1: was the child's stepfather and had legal authority, and so
Speaker 1: Suzanne simply vanished into Floyd's custody without anyone ever looking
Speaker 1: for her.
Speaker 2: Right, so she was never even reported as missing, exactly
Speaker 2: as they felt that she was with a legal guardian.
Speaker 1: Exactly. How can you identify a missing child if there's
Speaker 1: no reports of a missing child to identify, too unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Her biological father, Clifford Ray seve Akis, had previously signed
Speaker 1: parental consent allowing the children to be adopted, believing this
Speaker 1: would insure stability and keep the sisters together, And so
Speaker 1: when he later learned Sandra had remarried and reclaimed the children,
Speaker 1: he accepted that decision and honored that agreement not to interfere.
Speaker 1: For decades, he simply assumed Suzanne was alive, growing up
Speaker 1: in another family. For investigators, the revelation of all this
Speaker 1: was sobering, to say the least. By the time Suzanne
Speaker 1: re entered public life as Sharon Marshall, enrolled in schools,
Speaker 1: earning scholarships, making friends, all of this, the system had
Speaker 1: already lost her, and it would take her death, the
Speaker 1: kidnapping of her son, and nearly two decades of investigation
Speaker 1: and persistence to finally bring her real name back to light.
Speaker 1: Identifying Suzanne was a win, but there was still some
Speaker 1: loose ends. Investigators needed to find out. For years, investigators
Speaker 1: had believed Philip, known in the family accounts as Stevie,
Speaker 1: had disappeared alongside Suzanne when Franklin Floyd fled Texas in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies. His name appeared in missing person
Speaker 1: databases with approximate dates and little corroborating documentation. Even within
Speaker 1: the FBI. In the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
Speaker 1: uncertainty lingered over whether the child had ever left North
Speaker 1: Carolina at all, but that uncertainty persisted until twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: when a man living in Cherryville came forward with a
Speaker 1: suspicion he carried quietly since childhood. See he had been
Speaker 1: adopted as an infant. The topic was never really openly
Speaker 1: discussed in the household, but he discovered paperwork years earlier
Speaker 1: showing his original name was Brandenburg. As an adult after
Speaker 1: the death of his adopted father, he began searching online
Speaker 1: for answers, and what he found was a missing person
Speaker 1: listing that matched his birth date, his birthplace, and the
Speaker 1: name that he had seen on those documents. DNA testing
Speaker 1: soon confirmed he was, in fact Philip Stephen Brandenburg.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, this just keep it, just keeps going, Hey,
Speaker 2: it does, but I also feel like, gosh, would he
Speaker 2: want to know all this? Terrible?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but all four of those kids that were originally
Speaker 1: kidnapped by Floyd are officially now accounted for because the
Speaker 1: two middle sisters the mother got back, got them back,
Speaker 1: and so it was Suzanne and Philip who are missing.
Speaker 1: And now as an adult, Philip has finally filled in
Speaker 1: that last missing slot, while Suzanne, unfortunately was killed.
Speaker 2: Huh gosh okay.
Speaker 1: Now, Back in the nineteen nineties, after Floyd kidnapped Michael,
Speaker 1: the FBI traced a newborn adoption connected to Susanne and
Speaker 1: Floyd in New Orleans. That baby, a girl, had been
Speaker 1: placed with a family who had long suspected there was
Speaker 1: something deeply wrong about the circumstances surrounding that adoption. For years,
Speaker 1: they chose silence to protect their privacy, even as Suzanne's
Speaker 1: story resurfaced in books, court records, and online forums. But
Speaker 1: eventually they did reach out. The daughter, named Megan, grew
Speaker 1: up knowing she was adopted and that her biological mother
Speaker 1: had died in a car accident. That explanation, though incomplete,
Speaker 1: had been enough for a long time. Learning the truth
Speaker 1: that her mother had been kidnapped as a child, abused
Speaker 1: for years, and killed under suspicion circumstances well that came
Speaker 1: slowly and with care. Megan did not approach the story
Speaker 1: as a mystery to be solved. She approached it as
Speaker 1: a family history she needed to understand on her own terms.
Speaker 1: She read only portions of the books written about her mother.
Speaker 1: She searched for photographs. She looked for traces of resemblance,
Speaker 1: moments of normalcy, fragments of a life that existed outside
Speaker 1: of the violence that ultimately defined public understanding of Suzanne Sebacas.
Speaker 1: Her involvement shifted the tone of the case, because Suzanne
Speaker 1: was no longer only a victim reconstructed through files and memories.
Speaker 1: She was now a mother remembered by a living child.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, a but symbolic act marked the convergence
Speaker 1: of all these long separated lives. Suzanne's gravestone in Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: which for decades bore the name Tanya, it simply said
Speaker 1: Tanya nineteen sixty seven to nineteen ninety, and then it
Speaker 1: also said the words I'll always be with you. It
Speaker 1: stood where she was buried. It was paid for and
Speaker 1: provided by her friends and co workers. Floyd didn't have
Speaker 1: a penny that he put into it. Of course, they
Speaker 1: learned that her name wasn't Tanya Hughes, but they didn't
Speaker 1: know what to put, so they put the only name
Speaker 1: they knew, Tanya. But now with the discovery of who
Speaker 1: she really was, it was replaced with her real name,
Speaker 1: and now it reads Suzanne Marie Sevakis September sixth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine to April thirtieth, nineteen ninety Devoted mother and friend.
Speaker 2: Aw that's really nice.
Speaker 1: Family members, former classmates, friends and investigators, and her daughter
Speaker 1: Megan herself gathered to acknowledge what the system had failed
Speaker 1: to do. In real time. For the first time, Suzanne
Speaker 1: was publicly mourned as who she truly was. The ceremony
Speaker 1: did not resolve every unanswered question or bring back Michael.
Speaker 1: It didn't fully reconcile the anger, grief, and disagreement with
Speaker 1: Suzanne's family over what could have or should have been
Speaker 1: done differently, either. But it did something else that mattered
Speaker 1: deeply to those present. It restored Suzanne's identity in the
Speaker 1: historical records, and it gave them closure, if even only
Speaker 1: a little. She was no longer just the girl and
Speaker 1: the photograph, or the dancer with a false name, or
Speaker 1: the victim of a hit and run that never made sense.
Speaker 1: She was Suzanne Sevakus, a stolen child, a brilliant student,
Speaker 1: a devoted mother, and a woman whose life intersected with
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous predators in modern American criminal history. Now,
Speaker 1: as for Michael Hughes, without remains or forensic corroboration to
Speaker 1: back up what Floyd had told them, Michael Hughes could
Speaker 1: not be officially declared a homicide victim. He remains listed
Speaker 1: as missing, though presumed dead. For Michael's adoptive parents, Ernest
Speaker 1: and merle Bean, the outcome was devastating. They'd taken in
Speaker 1: a deeply traumatized toddler who could not speak, who rocked himself,
Speaker 1: who panicked in confined spaces, and over several years they
Speaker 1: watched him stabilize and begins school. When Floyd abducted Michael,
Speaker 1: he did not just steal a child. He erased a
Speaker 1: future with a family that had finally begun to take shape.
Speaker 1: Floyd never expressed remorse for Michael's disappearance. He never offered
Speaker 1: any clarity. He even in his confessions appeared calculated, arriving
Speaker 1: decades later when it could no longer meaningfully affect his
Speaker 1: sentence or expose him to additional punishment. Franklin Delano Floyd
Speaker 1: remained on death row in Florida for the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine murder of Cheryl Anne Comesso, and he died in
Speaker 1: custody on January twenty third, twenty twenty three, at the
Speaker 1: age of seventy nine. What remains in his wake is
Speaker 1: a case that unfolded across decades. His crimes were not
Speaker 1: the result of a single missed opportunity or catastrophic decision.
Speaker 1: They unfolded because of repeated institutional failures across multiple states,
Speaker 1: agencies and systems that rarely communicated with one another. The
Speaker 1: first failure happened quietly in nineteen seventy five, when Suzanne
Speaker 1: Sevakis vanished while her mother served a short jail sentence.
Speaker 1: No Amber alerts existed or coordinated interstate response followed. Authorities
Speaker 1: accepted that a stepfather had legal standing to remove children,
Speaker 1: even when the circumstances were clearly abnormal. Later failures were
Speaker 1: more subtle. School systems accepted paper work without verification, identity
Speaker 1: changes went unchecked. Social services and law enforcement operated in silos,
Speaker 1: each each seeing only fragments of a much larger pattern.
Speaker 1: Even when people noticed something was wrong teachers, classmates, coworkers,
Speaker 1: The absence of concrete proof stalled intervention. Suzanne learned early
Speaker 1: that silence was safer than resistance, and Floyd depended on
Speaker 1: that silence to survive. Yet despite it all, the case
Speaker 1: also shows what persistence can accomplish. Even if late ryl
Speaker 1: Ann Kamessal's murder was not solved through confession or eyewitness testimony,
Speaker 1: it was solved because of a mechanic noticing in envelope
Speaker 1: hidden in a stolen truck. Investigators refused to dismiss what
Speaker 1: was found, and forensic comparisons, patient reconstruction, and an unwillingness
Speaker 1: to let crucial circumstantial evidence be ignored ultimately secured Floyd's
Speaker 1: conviction and death sentence. Three of Sharon Marshall lasted decades
Speaker 1: longer than it should have, but it did not stay
Speaker 1: buried forever. Investigative journalism, renewed FBI attention, and advances in
Speaker 1: DNA analysis combined to answer questions that once seemed unresolvable.
Speaker 1: Susanne Sebacus was found, not alive, but found and restored
Speaker 1: to her name, her family, and her history. Other endings
Speaker 1: arrived quietly. Philip Brandenburg lived an entire life unaware of
Speaker 1: they had once been missing. Megan grew up without knowing
Speaker 1: the truth of her mother until adulthood, then chose to
Speaker 1: step forward anyways. These discoveries did not undo what had
Speaker 1: been done, but they narrowed the distance between what was
Speaker 1: known and what had been lost. Little Michael Hughes unfortunately
Speaker 1: remains the exception. His fate rests entirely on the words
Speaker 1: of a man who lied as easily as he breathed.
Speaker 1: In the end, the case of Sharon Marshall is not
Speaker 1: a story about a mystery alone. It is a record
Speaker 1: of how long abuse can go, even out into the open.
Speaker 1: Susanne Servakis was a child taken and abused. She was
Speaker 1: a young woman who tried to escape, and a mother
Speaker 1: whose life ended before she ever got the chance to
Speaker 1: truly be free. Cheryl Comesso was not collateral damage. She
Speaker 1: was a victim whose resistance likely sealed her fate, but
Speaker 1: in the end, because of her willingness to stand up
Speaker 1: for her friend, she was also the key to unlocking
Speaker 1: this entire story and putting Floyd behind bars for good,
Speaker 1: even if she wasn't alive to do so. If she
Speaker 1: had never stood up to him, I wonder what would
Speaker 1: have become of this story. All I know is I'm
Speaker 1: sure Suzanne would be proud of her friend for that.
Speaker 1: What remains now, though, is the facts and the names
Speaker 1: restored were possible, and the knowledge that some truths take
Speaker 1: decades to surface, but they still matter when they do.
Speaker 1: And that's a story of Sharon Marshall.
Speaker 2: Good God, this case makes me want to just solve,
Speaker 2: Like if I just went and sat in a dark,
Speaker 2: quiet corner, would probably just let it you.
Speaker 1: Your eyes are welling up right now.
Speaker 2: It's really sad this one, and it really fucked up yep,
Speaker 2: And nothing about it really makes sense, Like it makes sense.
Speaker 2: But why on earth did he have to take Michael?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean all of the stuff in here is like that,
Speaker 2: but like it just why, Like that kid was set
Speaker 2: up for life?
Speaker 1: None of it makes sense. You start with the four
Speaker 1: children here originally took. He'd put up three of them
Speaker 1: up for adoption, but kept Susan. You can make the
Speaker 1: argument he's a sexual predator, gotcha. Sure that makes some
Speaker 1: sense if you look at it and that aspect. But
Speaker 1: then she had three kids. He made her adopt the
Speaker 1: first one, kept the second one, adopt the third one.
Speaker 1: Then later after hypothetically killing her, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: question marks about that. What happened to her in hospital,
Speaker 1: there's many much speculation about what he did to her
Speaker 1: behind doctor's backs.
Speaker 2: Well, it definitely wouldn't be surprising exactly.
Speaker 1: So people theorize he did kill her in hospital, But
Speaker 1: then after that he goes and then takes Michael to
Speaker 1: just kill him. So none of it has any sense
Speaker 1: behind it whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like this, I don't know. I don't. I
Speaker 2: sometimes feel like I'm a little bit immune to like
Speaker 2: true crime because we've just covered so many cases and
Speaker 2: you know, it's a big part of our life, I guess,
Speaker 2: But there are certain cases that still just fuck me up. Well,
Speaker 2: this is one of them.
Speaker 1: Every single true crime case, it does hit me like
Speaker 1: a knife in the gut. But then, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: there's a couple where it seems like that knife twists
Speaker 1: or saltz port on the wound, it just hits differently.
Speaker 1: Not to say one case is greater or worse than
Speaker 1: the others. But yeah, you're right, some just they don't
Speaker 1: make sense. Yeah, why And like I said, one word
Speaker 1: encapsulates him. He's a monster, period, shortstop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of monsters in this world. And
Speaker 2: the fact too that he lived so long. I don't
Speaker 2: love that. Like what I mean, he had a terrible
Speaker 2: life in jail, I'm hoping, but like, why did he
Speaker 2: get to just live his whole life like that when
Speaker 2: he was killing people who were really young?
Speaker 1: I know? Now. I do want to say one thing though,
Speaker 1: because with true crime we talk about these monsters, these
Speaker 1: individuals who do horrible things, murderers, kidnappers, predators, all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. It's easy to focus on them and
Speaker 1: say this world is filled with monsters. You also have
Speaker 1: to remember the people surrounding this case. Single true crime
Speaker 1: with case covers a monster, but it covers so many good,
Speaker 1: good people in it too. There's hypothetic. If he's a monster,
Speaker 1: then these are angels. These are saviors Cheryl who backed
Speaker 1: up her friend. You have the investigators who never let
Speaker 1: this go. You have the special agents who spent months
Speaker 1: rehearsing knowing they had this one last shot to try
Speaker 1: and get the information from from Floyd to try and
Speaker 1: find out what happened.
Speaker 2: People never let up, like and Michael's adoptive parents.
Speaker 1: You know exactly, there are angels out there that outweigh
Speaker 1: these monsters tenfold. Time and time again, there are so
Speaker 1: I want us to remember that the good.
Speaker 2: Does outweigh the bad. You know, generally speaking, it's.
Speaker 1: Just sometimes hard to turn a blind eye to the bad.
Speaker 1: So anyways, hopefully you guys enjoyed this story. Like I said,
Speaker 1: bit of a deep dive. There is a lot on this.
Speaker 1: I think I'm soon going to get that book and
Speaker 1: give it a read, because this story is one that
Speaker 1: has peaked my interest and I would like to still
Speaker 1: go a little deeper even after we've finished telling the tale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you did a good job. Well done.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: You pass the test.
Speaker 1: Pass the test? Okay, thank you. I'm glad I passed
Speaker 1: a plus. And thank you guys for being here. We
Speaker 1: appreciate you. We're independent, we're a podcast all on our own.
Speaker 1: It's because of you we get to keep going. So
Speaker 1: if if you want to keep listening, we appreciate it.
Speaker 1: If you're here now and this is all you ever
Speaker 1: listened to. Hey, we still appreciate you. You mean a
Speaker 1: lot to us. Thank you, and until next time, stay wicked.