Speaker 1: Hey there, I want to give you a heads up
Speaker 1: that this episode may be upsetting for some listeners. Another gruesome,
Speaker 1: murderous part of this.
Speaker 2: Family story previously on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 3: I just wanted the answers who was Sharon Marshall? The
Speaker 3: DNA match both the father and the mother, and it
Speaker 3: came back as a confirmation that the girl who was
Speaker 3: killed in Oklahoma City was Suzanne Sevakas.
Speaker 4: I just completely burned down, completely burned down.
Speaker 1: I sometimes have this feeling that's hard to explain, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try. It's almost like there's a thin veil
Speaker 1: between life and death, and sometimes I can see right
Speaker 1: through it. It's part of why I got into this
Speaker 1: business of trying to find the names of John Doe's.
Speaker 1: The dead don't feel that far away from me. They're
Speaker 1: close by. My brother and sister died so after being born,
Speaker 1: they're still with me. And so were the two missing
Speaker 1: boys I became obsessed with back in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: At that point, I was thirty four, raising two boys
Speaker 1: alone and working on the Dough Network. Some days my
Speaker 1: mind would wander and I'd find myself thinking about the
Speaker 1: two missing boys. All things considered, I guess the six
Speaker 1: year old was alive and the infant was dead, just
Speaker 1: because it's hard to keep an infant alive. But eventually
Speaker 1: the infant, Steve Patterson called me. I don't even know
Speaker 1: how I got your remember he picked up the phone.
Speaker 2: I mean it was just one in a billion.
Speaker 1: I guess, But the six year old Michael never did.
Speaker 1: His mama was Susie Sevegas and he went by Michael Hughes.
Speaker 1: When I think of that thin veil between life and death,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which side he's on. He was in
Speaker 1: first grade when he vanished. News cruise taught to some
Speaker 1: of his classmates. He was in a class that I fell.
Speaker 1: He's not there anymore. Now he's not where is he?
Speaker 3: So may chook them.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I look at Michael's Doone Network page. He has
Speaker 1: this big toothy grin with missing teeth. Makes me think
Speaker 1: of my own sons and then my grandsons. Other days
Speaker 1: I google stories of men trying to find their parents,
Speaker 1: or look through John Doe's And then there are days
Speaker 1: that I wake up and think he's gone. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you what happened to him. Then you can
Speaker 1: decipher yourself which side of the bell he's on. My
Speaker 1: name is Todd Matthews and this is Hello John Doe.
Speaker 1: A sleuth, a family, and a serial killer. The story
Speaker 1: of a family torn apart by tragedy and my quest
Speaker 1: to bring them back together. Chapter seven, The Other Missing Boy.
Speaker 1: After Susie died, Floyd went to prison. Officials had finally
Speaker 1: figured out had been a fugitive on the run since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. So their child, Michael, ended up in
Speaker 1: foster care. He was a sweet toddler of brown hair
Speaker 1: and brown eyes, scaring his forehead, and two little crooked
Speaker 1: bottom teeth.
Speaker 3: So Michael was in the custody of two of the
Speaker 3: nicest people walk in the face of the your Marlin,
Speaker 3: Earnest beIN.
Speaker 1: That's former FBI agent Scott Lobb. He was tasked with
Speaker 1: figuring out what happened to Michael after his mama died.
Speaker 1: The Beans were an Oklahoma couple. Here they are in
Speaker 1: a local program talking about how they started fostering kids.
Speaker 5: We were at church and they had these two adorable
Speaker 5: little boys, and one day was talking to him and
Speaker 5: they said, oh, they're foster children. And we had no
Speaker 5: idea what foster children was all about. They told us
Speaker 5: that it was to the Department of Human Services and
Speaker 5: that you just take kids in and love them like
Speaker 5: you do your own, and I thought we can do that.
Speaker 1: The Beans were gone to foster eighty children, if you
Speaker 1: can believe it, including young Michael Hughes. They took him
Speaker 1: in May one, nineteen ninety. He had just celebrated his
Speaker 1: second birthday. Apparently, a caseworker told the Beans he still
Speaker 1: drank out of a bottle and only drank pepsi. He
Speaker 1: seemed to have some developmental delays and sometimes through epic tantrums.
Speaker 1: For a two year old, Michael had already had it tough,
Speaker 1: but the Beans gave him all the love they could.
Speaker 1: Over the next four years, Michael started to come into
Speaker 1: his own, growing physically and emotionally. This story has so
Speaker 1: many examples of chosen family. This is one. The Beans
Speaker 1: chose Michael as their family, and he chose them too.
Speaker 1: But throughout those four years, Franklin Ployce still got to
Speaker 1: see Michael, even though he was now in prison. The
Speaker 1: Beans had to bring Michael to the el Renal Federal
Speaker 1: Correctional Institute.
Speaker 3: Floyd would get I don't know, an hour or two
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 1: The Beans said Michael hated every minute of it. He
Speaker 1: go hide and talk about that mean man. But in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, floyd sentence was up, he was a
Speaker 1: free man and he wanted to pick up where he
Speaker 1: left on. By then, Michael is in kindergarten.
Speaker 3: When he gets out of prison, he starts trying to
Speaker 3: regain custody in Michael through the court system and through public,
Speaker 3: through media, and he's being turned down at every point.
Speaker 1: Floyd was persistent though he wanted Michael.
Speaker 3: Finally, somebody got wise and requested that essentially a DNA
Speaker 3: test be done and it turns out Floyd's not the father,
Speaker 3: and so immediately the Bean family filed for adoption.
Speaker 1: The DNA test results effectively stop Michael's visits with Floyd,
Speaker 1: which apparently got under Floyd's skin.
Speaker 3: Floyd knew from his interactions with Michael in the prison
Speaker 3: setting that he had a real love for the Bean family.
Speaker 3: He couldn't handle this. To him, Michael was his.
Speaker 1: The Beans knew something us up. Merlebane even said she
Speaker 1: saw Floyd looking around their house and a pickup truck.
Speaker 1: So they acted swiftly, trying to file for adoption as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible, but right before the adoption was finalized
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four, Floyd did something drastic awful. On
Speaker 1: September twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Michael Hughes went into his
Speaker 1: first grade classroom in Indian Meridian Elementary School the way
Speaker 1: he did every day. He wore black high top sneakers,
Speaker 1: wore red and blue shorts. He carried in a Laddin backpack.
Speaker 1: While Michael was in school, Floyd left his halfway house
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City wearing a wrinkled suit. He had a gun.
Speaker 1: He showed up at the front desk of Indian Meridian
Speaker 1: Elementary School. This is what he said, according to news reports,
Speaker 1: think I had better tea. I got a gun in
Speaker 1: my pocket and I better show it to you. I'm
Speaker 1: ready to die and if you don't help me, you
Speaker 1: won't live. Took Michael out of his classroom and he
Speaker 1: took Principal James Davis too. He forced them both into
Speaker 1: the principal's pickup truck and made him drive into the woods. There,
Speaker 1: he tied the principal to a tree. Then he got
Speaker 1: back into the pickup truck with Michael and drove away.
Speaker 1: It was the last time anyone saw Michael, not knowing
Speaker 1: what happened to him, destroyed the Bean family. Michael, who
Speaker 1: we were in the process of getting the papers and everything,
Speaker 1: was kidnapped, and after that we said no more foster kids.
Speaker 1: There was a nationwide search. The Beans tapped, the newspapers
Speaker 1: got on TV. They pleaded keep an eye out for Michael. Franklin. Floyd,
Speaker 1: claiming to be the boy's father, abducted him, even tied
Speaker 1: up the school's principal in the woods nearby. Michael Hughes
Speaker 1: still hasn't been seen since after the kidnap him Floyd
Speaker 1: Brown on one more time. A few months later, Floyd,
Speaker 1: then fifty one years old, moved to Louisville and got
Speaker 1: a job as a used car salesman. His neighbors observed
Speaker 1: some weird details. He wore second hand clothing and wanted
Speaker 1: to stay up all night. One neighbor said he always
Speaker 1: wanted to come over and watch the fugitive on TV.
Speaker 1: On his second day at the dealership, couriers delivering an
Speaker 1: express mail package to Floyd, except they were really undercover agents.
Speaker 1: Mark Anci remembers at the time he was an assistant
Speaker 1: US attorney in the Western District of Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Floyd had applied for a license under one of his aliases,
Speaker 2: and he had applied in Kentucky. So that's how we
Speaker 2: were able to locate him in Kentucky. He had slipped
Speaker 2: up by trying to get an id under one of
Speaker 2: his old aliases.
Speaker 1: They arrested him in charge him with the kidnapping of
Speaker 1: both Michael and his principal.
Speaker 2: The trial actually started in April of nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: about ten days before the Oaklhom City bombing, which actually
Speaker 2: occurred right across the street from the courthouse where we
Speaker 2: tried Franklin Floyd.
Speaker 1: Mark Anty was one of the prosecutors on the case.
Speaker 2: And the trial became a little interesting because Franklin Floyd
Speaker 2: decided to waive his right to a jury trial.
Speaker 1: Mark Skiz Floyd might have figured a Jerry might not
Speaker 1: be so friendly to him, especially because no one knew
Speaker 1: or Michael was.
Speaker 2: There was another interesting twist to the case. In addition
Speaker 2: to him waving his right to a jury trial, he
Speaker 2: really wanted to represent himself.
Speaker 1: This was unconventional, kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2: Judge Alie actually been over backwards to assist Franklin Floyd.
Speaker 2: You typically can't have a lawyer and argue the case yourself.
Speaker 2: It's one of the other. It's called hybrid representation. Judge
Speaker 2: Alli allowed some form of hybrid representation to placate Franklin Floyd.
Speaker 2: One of Franklin Floyd's key defenses is, I can't be guilty.
Speaker 2: I am the father of Michael Hughes. So we put
Speaker 2: on DNA evidence to disprove that he was the biological
Speaker 2: father of Michael Hughes. And of course he countered by
Speaker 2: suggesting that he was sort of the de facto father
Speaker 2: or grandfather.
Speaker 1: You heard that right. He was simultaneously arguing that he
Speaker 1: was both the father and grandfather Michael, which wasn't true.
Speaker 1: But Mark and the other prosecutor did call Michael's real father.
Speaker 2: To testify, Greg Higgs, who was actually Michael's biological father,
Speaker 2: very normal, married and had his own children and knew
Speaker 2: nothing about Michael. He did not know that he was
Speaker 2: Michael's father, and had noted to us that if he
Speaker 2: would have known that there was this whole custody spew
Speaker 2: dude and that Sharon had died, he would have gladly
Speaker 2: adopted Michael Wess his own.
Speaker 1: Sorry, my god. His real father would have taken him
Speaker 1: in had he known the trial didn't last longer than
Speaker 1: a week. Trial's go much quicker and you don't have
Speaker 1: a jury. After twenty years of running from similar crimes,
Speaker 1: Floyd couldn't run anymore. He was finally locked up on
Speaker 1: federal charges and sentenced to fifty two years for the
Speaker 1: kidnappings and other related crimes.
Speaker 2: There's no parole in the federal system, so when you
Speaker 2: get a fifty year plus sentence, it's effectively life without parole.
Speaker 1: Franklin Floyd may have been caught partaking Michael and principal
Speaker 1: James Davis, but authorities still wanted to know where the
Speaker 1: boy was. By the early twenty tens, it was a
Speaker 1: cold case and the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Speaker 1: Children was doing a cold case review, so they asked
Speaker 1: Agent Scott Lobbed to reopen the case. That's how he,
Speaker 1: an agent, ended up interview in Franklin Floyd. He was
Speaker 1: trying to jumpstart the case for the National Center for
Speaker 1: Missing and Exploited Children. Moving it forward meant finding out
Speaker 1: who Sharon Marshall was and what happened to her. It
Speaker 1: also meant figuring out what happened to.
Speaker 3: Michael and at the time of Michael's disappearance, they had
Speaker 3: local police involved in the matter, but at the time
Speaker 3: it was still not known that Franklin Floyd had taken
Speaker 3: him across state lines, and that is an element that
Speaker 3: is necessary for a prosecution of kidnapping at the federal level.
Speaker 1: A Sena's agent Lobbin first started asking Floyd flipped out,
Speaker 1: started rambling.
Speaker 3: We're FBI agents. We're here to talk to you about
Speaker 3: Michael Hughes. And I said, I've reopened the investigation. And
Speaker 3: he looked at me and says, what, I appreciate it
Speaker 3: if you close it?
Speaker 1: Oh, hell No. Seems to me that Floyd thought if
Speaker 1: he asked very nicely, the FBI could close their cold
Speaker 1: case investigation into a missing kid. They just didn't bat any.
Speaker 1: They took Floyd back to the day kidnapped Michael from
Speaker 1: Indian Meridian Elementaries. After leaving Principal Davis tied up in
Speaker 1: the woods. Where did he take Michael? He said, they
Speaker 1: drove along Interstate thirty five outside of Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3: And we had walked him down Interstate thirty five and
Speaker 3: Floyd said, we ended up in Dallas. We want to
Speaker 3: know what happened between Oklahoma City and Dallas.
Speaker 1: Now he had admitted to crossing state lines. But what
Speaker 1: he's about to ment to next, it's really hard to
Speaker 1: listen to. Floyd and Michael were in the pickup truck together.
Speaker 3: According to Floyd, Michael was asking about the beans, how
Speaker 3: he wanted to go back and see Mama Bean, and
Speaker 3: he was just acting up on the drive down there,
Speaker 3: and Floyd said he got to the point where he
Speaker 3: knew he could never be with Michael again. He knew
Speaker 3: every law enforcement official in the state of Oklahoma was
Speaker 3: searching for him.
Speaker 1: Think about all the witnesses at the elementary school. Plus
Speaker 1: it was now publicly known that Floyd wasn't Michael's father.
Speaker 1: He couldn't pass Michael off his he is the way
Speaker 1: he did Susie. On the way out of town, Floyd
Speaker 1: said he stopped to get a few things.
Speaker 3: Well, I stopped at a convenience store in Dell City,
Speaker 3: which is a suburban Oklahoma City, and bought him, you know,
Speaker 3: some some drinks and some knickknacks.
Speaker 1: He called them agents for and lawber. Following Floyd's pie,
Speaker 1: as he described what happened.
Speaker 3: You passed the crossroads mall, he goes well, that's that's
Speaker 3: where I handed Michael off. No you did in Floyd.
Speaker 3: At this point, we're just not even putting up with that,
Speaker 3: and we say he didn't he took him. And Nate
Speaker 3: jumps in at this point said, you know, we have
Speaker 3: the starting point, we have the any point. We want
Speaker 3: to know what happened in the middle.
Speaker 1: Floyd seemed like he was ready to answer. He asked
Speaker 1: for a pencil and a piece of paper.
Speaker 3: He draws a map and it's Interseate thirty five. We
Speaker 3: walk him down that road? What did you do? And
Speaker 3: then Floyd goes you know, he just goes on forever,
Speaker 3: talking about how they stopped.
Speaker 1: They both got out of the car in a brushy,
Speaker 1: secluded area off the side of the road.
Speaker 3: They pray, they talk, they pray some more, and he's crying.
Speaker 3: It's all crocodile tears, but he's crying, he's moaning, and
Speaker 3: I at this point I knew he had him. I
Speaker 3: slammed my hand down on the tabletop and said how
Speaker 3: did you kill him? And he startled him. He said,
Speaker 3: don't you do that in reference to me slapped my
Speaker 3: hand on the table. I'm asking how'd you kill him?
Speaker 3: Nate's asking him, why did you kill him? Now, I'm
Speaker 3: just repeating myself, And he's looking off to his right,
Speaker 3: crying and so forth. And he finally turned and looked
Speaker 3: at me. Tears are gone, and he says, I shot
Speaker 3: him twice in the back of the head to make
Speaker 3: it real quick.
Speaker 1: After years of deception, Floyd finally told the truth. It
Speaker 1: was worse than I ever imagined to waste. He could
Speaker 1: have just let the Beans raise Michael. His real father,
Speaker 1: Greg was even willing to raise him. Agent Lob has
Speaker 1: a theory on why Floyd would kill Michael.
Speaker 3: This is what I think, this is what Floyd said.
Speaker 3: But in his selfish mind, he said, well I can't
Speaker 3: have him. Nobody's going to have him, and he killed him.
Speaker 3: Very heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: For allmost two decades, no one had known what happened
Speaker 1: to Michael, not the Bean family, not Sandy and her kids.
Speaker 1: Now Franklin Floyd finally gave them an answer. There's a
Speaker 1: comfort in having a resolution after so many years of
Speaker 1: searching for clues, and yet there was no sense of
Speaker 1: comfort at the end of this.
Speaker 3: You know, a little kid lost his life, So it
Speaker 3: wasn't really it wasn't a high five moment. You know
Speaker 3: it just it was. We got the answers.
Speaker 1: The next step was getting photographs of the region to
Speaker 1: try to figure out where the murder had happened. These
Speaker 1: clues might help them find Michael's body.
Speaker 3: We took a couple members of the evidence response team
Speaker 3: from the office down there with us just do a
Speaker 3: kind of a cursory survey, an initial survey, and we
Speaker 3: decided we've got to go back and talk to Floyd.
Speaker 3: We want to really zero in on where because it's
Speaker 3: a big piece of property where this happened. And so
Speaker 3: we did. In January of twenty fifteen, we went back
Speaker 3: in South Floyd for the last time.
Speaker 1: A few months later, a full team descended on that
Speaker 1: area in Oklahoma. There was an evidence response tane, an anthropologist,
Speaker 1: and a state forensic doctor.
Speaker 3: And we go down there. We picked out an area
Speaker 3: based on Floyd's description of where we thought that the
Speaker 3: murder happened, and we staked off maybe a two thousand
Speaker 3: square foot area. They had cautioned us, the anthropologist and
Speaker 3: the forensic person from the state, that you're not going
Speaker 3: to find it any human matter.
Speaker 1: It's because of something else. I really hate thinking about
Speaker 1: the area where Michael was shot as a high population
Speaker 1: of wild hogs.
Speaker 3: We sat there for two days, eight hours, ten hours
Speaker 3: a day, just sifting dirt looking for something, and we
Speaker 3: didn't find anything at all.
Speaker 1: My heart sank when I heard they didn't find a
Speaker 1: body or even bones. But but that remains. I figured
Speaker 1: we didn't know for sure that Michael was dead. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's hope. Agent Lomb thought otherwise.
Speaker 3: I believe Floyd killed Michael where he said he did.
Speaker 3: And I say that because in interviewing Floyd, you're looking
Speaker 3: for indicators that somebody's lying to you, and with Floyd,
Speaker 3: he was lying to us all the time. But we
Speaker 3: knew when he was telling the truth called almost a
Speaker 3: truth tell and there is no doubt in my mind
Speaker 3: that Floyd was telling the truth in how he killed
Speaker 3: Michael and where he killed Michael. And then there's people
Speaker 3: who think Michael still living and walking the earth somewhere.
Speaker 3: I just I don't believe that at all. I just
Speaker 3: don't believe it.
Speaker 1: I guess I'd just like to hear it from Michael.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds strange, but I'm in a holding
Speaker 1: pattern until.
Speaker 3: I see a body.
Speaker 1: I need to see it so that it can release me,
Speaker 1: and now I'm the sleuth in this story. I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine how Michael's biological family thinks about his disappearance.
Speaker 1: So I called up Sandy to ask her about her grandson.
Speaker 4: Do I think Michael's life? I mean you and you
Speaker 4: and I disagree about this time, but I don't think
Speaker 4: Michael's alive.
Speaker 1: I just want him to.
Speaker 4: Be I would love for him to be alive. But
Speaker 4: I know what a temper Floyd had. Yeah, and if
Speaker 4: he thought he was disrespected, it's hard to tell him what.
Speaker 3: He would do.
Speaker 6: It really is we disagree.
Speaker 1: I don't think we really disagree so much as it
Speaker 1: is that just I think we both hope yes, and
Speaker 1: I hope pretty heavy. So I still don't want to
Speaker 1: give up.
Speaker 4: I haven't given up either.
Speaker 1: So Floyd landed behind bars for kidnapping Michael because he
Speaker 1: couldn't or wouldn't let him grow up with the beans,
Speaker 1: but that kidnapping was not what put him on death row.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands of Florida, jury found Floyd
Speaker 1: guilty of first degree murder. Believe it or not, it
Speaker 1: wasn't the death of Michael or his mama, Susie Sevacas.
Speaker 1: There was a third victim. Remember I told you that
Speaker 1: Susie was a dancer to strip club called Mon's Venus.
Speaker 1: That's where she met her friend, Cheryl Comesso. Cheryl had
Speaker 1: very long black hair and lots of photos. It's kind
Speaker 1: of teased, very nineteen eighties. A lot of people said
Speaker 1: she was gorgeous and Italian and wanted to be a model.
Speaker 1: Mon's Venus was just going to be a stepping stone
Speaker 1: for her. Couple of times a week she would come
Speaker 1: over to Floyd and Susie's two bedroom trailer. They all
Speaker 1: hung out. She got close to Susie and apparently talked
Speaker 1: to her about leaving Floyd. A lot of people that
Speaker 1: worked at Mon's Venus talked to Susie about it. Daniel
Speaker 1: Floyd was controlling and creepy. By this point. Susie was
Speaker 1: about twenty years old. As I told you a couple
Speaker 1: of chapters ago, Sheryl went missing in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: leaving only a red Corvette behind. Six years later, a
Speaker 1: landscaper come across the remains off Interstate two seventy five
Speaker 1: in Florida. For years, she was Jane Doe I two
Speaker 1: seventy five, but with a lot of detective work, authorities
Speaker 1: finally identified her.
Speaker 2: And they were able to identify the victim of Cheryl Comesso.
Speaker 1: Investigators then had to try to figure out who killed her.
Speaker 1: They suspected Floyd because he hung out with her in Florida,
Speaker 1: but didn't have enough to put him away on just
Speaker 1: their association with one another. But in a matter of
Speaker 1: time the case had a breakthrough. A karma canny was
Speaker 1: doing some repairs on a pickup truck, the one Floyd
Speaker 1: ran away with. Michael Innn here's the agent law again.
Speaker 3: They found the vehicle Franklin Floyd used to get away
Speaker 3: from Oklahoma in a parking lot in Dallas, Texas have
Speaker 3: believed a wonderbread speaking factory.
Speaker 2: They put it up on a lift and that's when
Speaker 2: it was discovered that there were a number of photographs
Speaker 2: taped to the gas tank of that.
Speaker 1: Truck, more than three dozen of them, all of young
Speaker 1: women in various states of undress.
Speaker 2: And it was pretty obvious to me and all of
Speaker 2: us when we saw those photos that these were sort
Speaker 2: of Franklin Floyd's trophies because there was a lot of
Speaker 2: incriminating photographs, including photographs of Sharon Marshall was.
Speaker 5: A little girl.
Speaker 1: Yantie suspens. Floyd put them under his car because he
Speaker 1: couldn't stand to get rid of his trophies. Maybe he
Speaker 1: thought he'd come back and get them someday. Either way,
Speaker 1: they confirmed the unimaginable that Floyd had been abused in
Speaker 1: his step daughter since childhood when he kidnapped Susie, which.
Speaker 2: Confirmed our suspicion that he was a pedophile. There were
Speaker 2: also another photo or two of women that we never hadid.
Speaker 1: Other photographs showed a woman partially dressed and she had
Speaker 1: been beaten. It was Cheryl.
Speaker 2: They had found a body, skeletal remains of a woman
Speaker 2: a few years earlier in St. Petersburg area. They were
Speaker 2: able to take the clothing and wash it. And when
Speaker 2: you look at the photos they uploaded, and you saw
Speaker 2: the pink or the purple bikini in the striped shirt
Speaker 2: and compared it with the photos that we found, you
Speaker 2: could tell us the exact same clothing.
Speaker 1: What's in these photographs honestly makes me see. But this
Speaker 1: evidence was crucial in the State of Florida's case against
Speaker 1: Franklin ploy.
Speaker 2: These were polaroids and he was very clear not to
Speaker 2: show himself in any of them, although there was one
Speaker 2: good thumb photo in one of the photographs that I
Speaker 2: know that the police in Florida used to their advantage
Speaker 2: to try to identify him.
Speaker 1: I don't know why Cheryl was murdered. No one does,
Speaker 1: but there's reason to think that she probably got in
Speaker 1: between Floyd and Susie. And as far as you know,
Speaker 1: no other murder.
Speaker 2: Victims, well, as far as we know, I think we
Speaker 2: all suspect there are more.
Speaker 1: By the time Floyd was sentence in Cheryl's death, he
Speaker 1: was already locked up for other crimes, including the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four Michael Hughes kidnapping. Here's agent law again.
Speaker 3: I've always maintained that for somebody on death row, death
Speaker 3: is easy. They get out of prison. What's harder is
Speaker 3: sitting there in yourself for twenty three hours a day.
Speaker 3: Sounds a little cruel, and maybe it is. That's just
Speaker 3: how I feel. Every now and then you get a
Speaker 3: case that you read about and the guy gets the
Speaker 3: death penalty when it is safe involves children like it
Speaker 3: did in this case, you're just like, yeah, good.
Speaker 1: Dorothy, Sandy's youngest wanted to confront Floyd to tell him
Speaker 1: flat out how much he had taken from her family.
Speaker 1: She never got to know her oldest sister, Susie. Dorothy
Speaker 1: was born after Susie was already gone.
Speaker 7: Excuse my language, bless So when that motherfucker goes to die,
Speaker 7: I want to be in a window holding my sister's
Speaker 7: picture up along with my nephew and watch him take
Speaker 7: his last breast and tell him flat out you took
Speaker 7: this from me, and I never got it.
Speaker 1: I even wrote to Floyd in prison. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to understand, but what he responded was basically incomprehensible. Floyd
Speaker 1: may have been sentenced to death, but he was never
Speaker 1: put to death. His defense consistently argued that he was
Speaker 1: too mentally unstable to face the death penalty. Other people
Speaker 1: I spoke to who knew him said his mental illness
Speaker 1: was among the most pronounced I had ever seen on
Speaker 1: death row. Floyd died of natural causes in January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. He was seventy nine. Of all the people
Speaker 1: in this story, Floyd got to die of old age.
Speaker 1: The Tampa Bay Times wrote about his death. They listed
Speaker 1: off his string of crimes, Sheryl's murderer, Michael's kidnapping, and
Speaker 1: references erratic and angry behavior. A Florida state attorney was
Speaker 1: quoted in Floyd's obituary. He said, a better thing couldn't
Speaker 1: have happened to a worse person. The news made its
Speaker 1: way to Agent Lam.
Speaker 3: And I had promised him, Floyd, You're going to die
Speaker 3: in prison, and I remember one of my first reactions was, well,
Speaker 3: it's a promise I kept.
Speaker 1: Sandy was elated to hear that he had died. Hallelujah.
Speaker 4: He sure ain't going to have him.
Speaker 1: By the time Amy, Sandy's third daughter, heard of Floyd's passing,
Speaker 1: she was already trying to move past him.
Speaker 8: He didn't deserve the right for me to think about him,
Speaker 8: to care about him, to give two sticks in the
Speaker 8: dirt of what his life was like or anything.
Speaker 6: He didn't have that.
Speaker 2: Rate, So I don't let it bother me.
Speaker 1: Floyd was never held accountable for most of what he
Speaker 1: did to Sandy's family, How he separated a boy from
Speaker 1: his mother, how he did it again when he murdered
Speaker 1: Susie and left Michael motherless. When Steve got adopted and
Speaker 1: ended up with Mary's family, He ended up in the dark,
Speaker 1: consumed by feeling of not being wanted.
Speaker 6: Do you know what Franklin did with Stephen That was
Speaker 6: that's bullshit. Nobody, and I mean nobody should never be
Speaker 6: taken away from their mother at all. And then you know,
Speaker 6: he gets robbed of knowing his birth mother.
Speaker 1: That left Steve at a crossroads last week, left him
Speaker 1: he hadn't made up his mind if he wanted to
Speaker 1: keep getting to know Sindy, if that one could ever
Speaker 1: be repaired. I'd spent so many years think employd might
Speaker 1: have killed Steve. When I found out he was still alive,
Speaker 1: it was an absolute miracle. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why this case is so unusual for me. Usually I
Speaker 1: find dead people and reuniting with their families, but with Steve,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out how to help him heal.
Speaker 1: There are no physical marks on Steve like they were
Speaker 1: on Shril or Susie. But Floyd didn't just leave wounds
Speaker 1: that you can see. He was an emotional wrecking bomb
Speaker 1: for Steve and his siblings. They have to decide if
Speaker 1: they want to choose each other as family now in
Speaker 1: middle age, or if they want to let Sleep and
Speaker 1: Dows lie because they just can't see a path forward together.
Speaker 1: It's the biggest question of this entire podcast. Next time
Speaker 1: on Hello John Doe. Steve's sister Amy grew up with
Speaker 1: their mother, Sandy, but by the time she was a teenager,
Speaker 1: she left home and had planned on never looking back.
Speaker 8: I feel like he's a little bit jealous because I
Speaker 8: had our actual mom, and I'm jealous that he didn't
Speaker 8: have her. Instead of being part of the family, he
Speaker 8: was given away, when in all reality it saved his life.
Speaker 1: Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
Speaker 1: in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First
Speaker 1: to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
Speaker 1: partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and
Speaker 1: produced by Kate Michkin. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: She is also nio on Home Media's executive editor. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Masarura. Sound design and
Speaker 1: mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Speaker 1: Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Speaker 1: Dot Sessions. Frendall Faulton is our fact checker. Our production
Speaker 1: manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media. Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Special thanks to Adelia Ruben at
Speaker 1: NEI on Hum and Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at
Speaker 1: iHeart Media. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about
Speaker 1: names at NamUs dot com. The number for the National
Speaker 1: Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one eight
Speaker 1: hundred the loss that's one eight hundred eight four three
Speaker 1: five six seven eight. The National Sexual Assault Hotline from
Speaker 1: the Rate of Use and Incest National Network is one
Speaker 1: eight hundred six five six four six seven three. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: this is the end of the show. If you didn't
Speaker 1: like it, don't do anything. But if you did like it,
Speaker 1: you make sure that you rate and review the show.
Speaker 1: It helps more people to find it and hear this
Speaker 1: wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.