March 19, 2024 • 30 mins
Steve wasn’t the only boy from his birth family to disappear and be presumed dead. When Suzie grew up, she had a son. His name was Michael. One day he went to school, with his Aladdin backpack in hand, and never came home. He was just a first grader. When the the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children pushed to reopen the case, FBI Agent Lobb pieced together what happened to him. Incredibly, Floyd was trying to pass off Michael as his son.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, I want to give you a heads up
that this episode may be upsetting for some listeners. Another gruesome,
murderous part of this.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Family story previously on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I just wanted the answers who was Sharon Marshall? The
DNA match both the father and the mother, and it
came back as a confirmation that the girl who was
killed in Oklahoma City was Suzanne Sevakas.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
I just completely burned down, completely burned down.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I sometimes have this feeling that's hard to explain, but
I'm gonna try. It's almost like there's a thin veil
between life and death, and sometimes I can see right
through it. It's part of why I got into this
business of trying to find the names of John Doe's.
The dead don't feel that far away from me. They're
close by. My brother and sister died so after being born,
(01:01):
they're still with me. And so were the two missing
boys I became obsessed with back in two thousand and four.
At that point, I was thirty four, raising two boys
alone and working on the Dough Network. Some days my
mind would wander and I'd find myself thinking about the
two missing boys. All things considered, I guess the six
year old was alive and the infant was dead, just
(01:23):
because it's hard to keep an infant alive. But eventually
the infant, Steve Patterson called me. I don't even know
how I got your remember he picked up the phone.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I mean it was just one in a billion.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I guess, But the six year old Michael never did.
His mama was Susie Sevegas and he went by Michael Hughes.
When I think of that thin veil between life and death,
I'm not sure which side he's on. He was in
first grade when he vanished. News cruise taught to some
of his classmates. He was in a class that I fell.
(01:59):
He's not there anymore. Now he's not where is he?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So may chook them.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Sometimes I look at Michael's Doone Network page. He has
this big toothy grin with missing teeth. Makes me think
of my own sons and then my grandsons. Other days
I google stories of men trying to find their parents,
or look through John Doe's And then there are days
(02:25):
that I wake up and think he's gone. I'm going
to tell you what happened to him. Then you can
decipher yourself which side of the bell he's on. My
name is Todd Matthews and this is Hello John Doe.
A sleuth, a family, and a serial killer. The story
of a family torn apart by tragedy and my quest
(02:46):
to bring them back together. Chapter seven, The Other Missing Boy.
After Susie died, Floyd went to prison. Officials had finally
figured out had been a fugitive on the run since
nineteen seventy three. So their child, Michael, ended up in
foster care. He was a sweet toddler of brown hair
(03:09):
and brown eyes, scaring his forehead, and two little crooked
bottom teeth.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So Michael was in the custody of two of the
nicest people walk in the face of the your Marlin,
Earnest beIN.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's former FBI agent Scott Lobb. He was tasked with
figuring out what happened to Michael after his mama died.
The Beans were an Oklahoma couple. Here they are in
a local program talking about how they started fostering kids.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
We were at church and they had these two adorable
little boys, and one day was talking to him and
they said, oh, they're foster children. And we had no
idea what foster children was all about. They told us
that it was to the Department of Human Services and
that you just take kids in and love them like
you do your own, and I thought we can do that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
The Beans were gone to foster eighty children, if you
can believe it, including young Michael Hughes. They took him
in May one, nineteen ninety. He had just celebrated his
second birthday. Apparently, a caseworker told the Beans he still
drank out of a bottle and only drank pepsi. He
seemed to have some developmental delays and sometimes through epic tantrums.
(04:20):
For a two year old, Michael had already had it tough,
but the Beans gave him all the love they could.
Over the next four years, Michael started to come into
his own, growing physically and emotionally. This story has so
many examples of chosen family. This is one. The Beans
chose Michael as their family, and he chose them too.
(04:43):
But throughout those four years, Franklin Ployce still got to
see Michael, even though he was now in prison. The
Beans had to bring Michael to the el Renal Federal
Correctional Institute.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Floyd would get I don't know, an hour or two
with them.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
The Beans said Michael hated every minute of it. He
go hide and talk about that mean man. But in
nineteen ninety three, floyd sentence was up, he was a
free man and he wanted to pick up where he
left on. By then, Michael is in kindergarten.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
When he gets out of prison, he starts trying to
regain custody in Michael through the court system and through public,
through media, and he's being turned down at every point.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Floyd was persistent though he wanted Michael.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Finally, somebody got wise and requested that essentially a DNA
test be done and it turns out Floyd's not the father,
and so immediately the Bean family filed for adoption.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The DNA test results effectively stop Michael's visits with Floyd,
which apparently got under Floyd's skin.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Floyd knew from his interactions with Michael in the prison
setting that he had a real love for the Bean family.
He couldn't handle this. To him, Michael was his.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
The Beans knew something us up. Merlebane even said she
saw Floyd looking around their house and a pickup truck.
So they acted swiftly, trying to file for adoption as
quickly as possible, but right before the adoption was finalized
in nineteen ninety four, Floyd did something drastic awful. On
(06:21):
September twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Michael Hughes went into his
first grade classroom in Indian Meridian Elementary School the way
he did every day. He wore black high top sneakers,
wore red and blue shorts. He carried in a Laddin backpack.
While Michael was in school, Floyd left his halfway house
in Oklahoma City wearing a wrinkled suit. He had a gun.
(06:42):
He showed up at the front desk of Indian Meridian
Elementary School. This is what he said, according to news reports,
think I had better tea. I got a gun in
my pocket and I better show it to you. I'm
ready to die and if you don't help me, you
won't live. Took Michael out of his classroom and he
took Principal James Davis too. He forced them both into
(07:05):
the principal's pickup truck and made him drive into the woods. There,
he tied the principal to a tree. Then he got
back into the pickup truck with Michael and drove away.
It was the last time anyone saw Michael, not knowing
(07:27):
what happened to him, destroyed the Bean family. Michael, who
we were in the process of getting the papers and everything,
was kidnapped, and after that we said no more foster kids.
There was a nationwide search. The Beans tapped, the newspapers
got on TV. They pleaded keep an eye out for Michael. Franklin. Floyd,
claiming to be the boy's father, abducted him, even tied
(07:50):
up the school's principal in the woods nearby. Michael Hughes
still hasn't been seen since after the kidnap him Floyd
Brown on one more time. A few months later, Floyd,
then fifty one years old, moved to Louisville and got
a job as a used car salesman. His neighbors observed
some weird details. He wore second hand clothing and wanted
(08:12):
to stay up all night. One neighbor said he always
wanted to come over and watch the fugitive on TV.
On his second day at the dealership, couriers delivering an
express mail package to Floyd, except they were really undercover agents.
Mark Anci remembers at the time he was an assistant
US attorney in the Western District of Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Floyd had applied for a license under one of his aliases,
and he had applied in Kentucky. So that's how we
were able to locate him in Kentucky. He had slipped
up by trying to get an id under one of
his old aliases.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
They arrested him in charge him with the kidnapping of
both Michael and his principal.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
The trial actually started in April of nineteen ninety five,
about ten days before the Oaklhom City bombing, which actually
occurred right across the street from the courthouse where we
tried Franklin Floyd.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Mark Anty was one of the prosecutors on the case.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And the trial became a little interesting because Franklin Floyd
decided to waive his right to a jury trial.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Mark Skiz Floyd might have figured a Jerry might not
be so friendly to him, especially because no one knew
or Michael was.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
There was another interesting twist to the case. In addition
to him waving his right to a jury trial, he
really wanted to represent himself.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
This was unconventional, kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Judge Alie actually been over backwards to assist Franklin Floyd.
You typically can't have a lawyer and argue the case yourself.
It's one of the other. It's called hybrid representation. Judge
Alli allowed some form of hybrid representation to placate Franklin Floyd.
(10:04):
One of Franklin Floyd's key defenses is, I can't be guilty.
I am the father of Michael Hughes. So we put
on DNA evidence to disprove that he was the biological
father of Michael Hughes. And of course he countered by
suggesting that he was sort of the de facto father
or grandfather.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
You heard that right. He was simultaneously arguing that he
was both the father and grandfather Michael, which wasn't true.
But Mark and the other prosecutor did call Michael's real father.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
To testify, Greg Higgs, who was actually Michael's biological father,
very normal, married and had his own children and knew
nothing about Michael. He did not know that he was
Michael's father, and had noted to us that if he
would have known that there was this whole custody spew
(11:00):
dude and that Sharon had died, he would have gladly
adopted Michael Wess his own.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Sorry, my god. His real father would have taken him
in had he known the trial didn't last longer than
a week. Trial's go much quicker and you don't have
a jury. After twenty years of running from similar crimes,
Floyd couldn't run anymore. He was finally locked up on
(11:26):
federal charges and sentenced to fifty two years for the
kidnappings and other related crimes.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
There's no parole in the federal system, so when you
get a fifty year plus sentence, it's effectively life without parole.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Franklin Floyd may have been caught partaking Michael and principal
James Davis, but authorities still wanted to know where the
boy was. By the early twenty tens, it was a
cold case and the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children was doing a cold case review, so they asked
Agent Scott Lobbed to reopen the case. That's how he,
an agent, ended up interview in Franklin Floyd. He was
(12:02):
trying to jumpstart the case for the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children. Moving it forward meant finding out
who Sharon Marshall was and what happened to her. It
also meant figuring out what happened to.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Michael and at the time of Michael's disappearance, they had
local police involved in the matter, but at the time
it was still not known that Franklin Floyd had taken
him across state lines, and that is an element that
is necessary for a prosecution of kidnapping at the federal level.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
A Sena's agent Lobbin first started asking Floyd flipped out,
started rambling.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
We're FBI agents. We're here to talk to you about
Michael Hughes. And I said, I've reopened the investigation. And
he looked at me and says, what, I appreciate it
if you close it?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Oh, hell No. Seems to me that Floyd thought if
he asked very nicely, the FBI could close their cold
case investigation into a missing kid. They just didn't bat any.
They took Floyd back to the day kidnapped Michael from
Indian Meridian Elementaries. After leaving Principal Davis tied up in
the woods. Where did he take Michael? He said, they
(13:06):
drove along Interstate thirty five outside of Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
And we had walked him down Interstate thirty five and
Floyd said, we ended up in Dallas. We want to
know what happened between Oklahoma City and Dallas.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Now he had admitted to crossing state lines. But what
he's about to ment to next, it's really hard to
listen to. Floyd and Michael were in the pickup truck together.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
According to Floyd, Michael was asking about the beans, how
he wanted to go back and see Mama Bean, and
he was just acting up on the drive down there,
and Floyd said he got to the point where he
knew he could never be with Michael again. He knew
every law enforcement official in the state of Oklahoma was
searching for him.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Think about all the witnesses at the elementary school. Plus
it was now publicly known that Floyd wasn't Michael's father.
He couldn't pass Michael off his he is the way
he did Susie. On the way out of town, Floyd
said he stopped to get a few things.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, I stopped at a convenience store in Dell City,
which is a suburban Oklahoma City, and bought him, you know,
some some drinks and some knickknacks.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He called them agents for and lawber. Following Floyd's pie,
as he described what happened.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
You passed the crossroads mall, he goes well, that's that's
where I handed Michael off. No you did in Floyd.
At this point, we're just not even putting up with that,
and we say he didn't he took him. And Nate
jumps in at this point said, you know, we have
the starting point, we have the any point. We want
to know what happened in the middle.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Floyd seemed like he was ready to answer. He asked
for a pencil and a piece of paper.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
He draws a map and it's Interseate thirty five. We
walk him down that road? What did you do? And
then Floyd goes you know, he just goes on forever,
talking about how they stopped.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
They both got out of the car in a brushy,
secluded area off the side of the road.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
They pray, they talk, they pray some more, and he's crying.
It's all crocodile tears, but he's crying, he's moaning, and
I at this point I knew he had him. I
slammed my hand down on the tabletop and said how
did you kill him? And he startled him. He said,
(15:27):
don't you do that in reference to me slapped my
hand on the table. I'm asking how'd you kill him?
Nate's asking him, why did you kill him? Now, I'm
just repeating myself, And he's looking off to his right,
crying and so forth. And he finally turned and looked
at me. Tears are gone, and he says, I shot
him twice in the back of the head to make
(15:47):
it real quick.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
After years of deception, Floyd finally told the truth. It
was worse than I ever imagined to waste. He could
have just let the Beans raise Michael. His real father,
Greg was even willing to raise him. Agent Lob has
a theory on why Floyd would kill Michael.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
This is what I think, this is what Floyd said.
But in his selfish mind, he said, well I can't
have him. Nobody's going to have him, and he killed him.
Very heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
For allmost two decades, no one had known what happened
to Michael, not the Bean family, not Sandy and her kids.
Now Franklin Floyd finally gave them an answer. There's a
comfort in having a resolution after so many years of
searching for clues, and yet there was no sense of
comfort at the end of this.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
You know, a little kid lost his life, So it
wasn't really it wasn't a high five moment. You know
it just it was. We got the answers.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The next step was getting photographs of the region to
try to figure out where the murder had happened. These
clues might help them find Michael's body.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
We took a couple members of the evidence response team
from the office down there with us just do a
kind of a cursory survey, an initial survey, and we
decided we've got to go back and talk to Floyd.
We want to really zero in on where because it's
a big piece of property where this happened. And so
(17:18):
we did. In January of twenty fifteen, we went back
in South Floyd for the last time.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
A few months later, a full team descended on that
area in Oklahoma. There was an evidence response tane, an anthropologist,
and a state forensic doctor.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And we go down there. We picked out an area
based on Floyd's description of where we thought that the
murder happened, and we staked off maybe a two thousand
square foot area. They had cautioned us, the anthropologist and
the forensic person from the state, that you're not going
to find it any human matter.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
It's because of something else. I really hate thinking about
the area where Michael was shot as a high population
of wild hogs.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
We sat there for two days, eight hours, ten hours
a day, just sifting dirt looking for something, and we
didn't find anything at all.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
My heart sank when I heard they didn't find a
body or even bones. But but that remains. I figured
we didn't know for sure that Michael was dead. Maybe
there's hope. Agent Lomb thought otherwise.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
I believe Floyd killed Michael where he said he did.
And I say that because in interviewing Floyd, you're looking
for indicators that somebody's lying to you, and with Floyd,
he was lying to us all the time. But we
knew when he was telling the truth called almost a
truth tell and there is no doubt in my mind
(18:48):
that Floyd was telling the truth in how he killed
Michael and where he killed Michael. And then there's people
who think Michael still living and walking the earth somewhere.
I just I don't believe that at all. I just
don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
I guess I'd just like to hear it from Michael.
I know it sounds strange, but I'm in a holding
pattern until.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I see a body.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I need to see it so that it can release me,
and now I'm the sleuth in this story. I can't
even imagine how Michael's biological family thinks about his disappearance.
So I called up Sandy to ask her about her grandson.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Do I think Michael's life? I mean you and you
and I disagree about this time, but I don't think
Michael's alive.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I just want him to.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Be I would love for him to be alive. But
I know what a temper Floyd had. Yeah, and if
he thought he was disrespected, it's hard to tell him what.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
He would do.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
It really is we disagree.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I don't think we really disagree so much as it
is that just I think we both hope yes, and
I hope pretty heavy. So I still don't want to
give up.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
I haven't given up either.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So Floyd landed behind bars for kidnapping Michael because he
couldn't or wouldn't let him grow up with the beans,
but that kidnapping was not what put him on death row.
In the early two thousands of Florida, jury found Floyd
guilty of first degree murder. Believe it or not, it
wasn't the death of Michael or his mama, Susie Sevacas.
There was a third victim. Remember I told you that
(20:24):
Susie was a dancer to strip club called Mon's Venus.
That's where she met her friend, Cheryl Comesso. Cheryl had
very long black hair and lots of photos. It's kind
of teased, very nineteen eighties. A lot of people said
she was gorgeous and Italian and wanted to be a model.
Mon's Venus was just going to be a stepping stone
for her. Couple of times a week she would come
(20:45):
over to Floyd and Susie's two bedroom trailer. They all
hung out. She got close to Susie and apparently talked
to her about leaving Floyd. A lot of people that
worked at Mon's Venus talked to Susie about it. Daniel
Floyd was controlling and creepy. By this point. Susie was
about twenty years old. As I told you a couple
of chapters ago, Sheryl went missing in nineteen eighty nine,
(21:07):
leaving only a red Corvette behind. Six years later, a
landscaper come across the remains off Interstate two seventy five
in Florida. For years, she was Jane Doe I two
seventy five, but with a lot of detective work, authorities
finally identified her.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And they were able to identify the victim of Cheryl Comesso.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Investigators then had to try to figure out who killed her.
They suspected Floyd because he hung out with her in Florida,
but didn't have enough to put him away on just
their association with one another. But in a matter of
time the case had a breakthrough. A karma canny was
doing some repairs on a pickup truck, the one Floyd
(21:47):
ran away with. Michael Innn here's the agent law again.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
They found the vehicle Franklin Floyd used to get away
from Oklahoma in a parking lot in Dallas, Texas have
believed a wonderbread speaking factory.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
They put it up on a lift and that's when
it was discovered that there were a number of photographs
taped to the gas tank of that.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Truck, more than three dozen of them, all of young
women in various states of undress.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And it was pretty obvious to me and all of
us when we saw those photos that these were sort
of Franklin Floyd's trophies because there was a lot of
incriminating photographs, including photographs of Sharon Marshall was.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
A little girl.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yantie suspens. Floyd put them under his car because he
couldn't stand to get rid of his trophies. Maybe he
thought he'd come back and get them someday. Either way,
they confirmed the unimaginable that Floyd had been abused in
his step daughter since childhood when he kidnapped Susie, which.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Confirmed our suspicion that he was a pedophile. There were
also another photo or two of women that we never hadid.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Other photographs showed a woman partially dressed and she had
been beaten. It was Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
They had found a body, skeletal remains of a woman
a few years earlier in St. Petersburg area. They were
able to take the clothing and wash it. And when
you look at the photos they uploaded, and you saw
the pink or the purple bikini in the striped shirt
(23:29):
and compared it with the photos that we found, you
could tell us the exact same clothing.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
What's in these photographs honestly makes me see. But this
evidence was crucial in the State of Florida's case against
Franklin ploy.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
These were polaroids and he was very clear not to
show himself in any of them, although there was one
good thumb photo in one of the photographs that I
know that the police in Florida used to their advantage
to try to identify him.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I don't know why Cheryl was murdered. No one does,
but there's reason to think that she probably got in
between Floyd and Susie. And as far as you know,
no other murder.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Victims, well, as far as we know, I think we
all suspect there are more.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
By the time Floyd was sentence in Cheryl's death, he
was already locked up for other crimes, including the nineteen
ninety four Michael Hughes kidnapping. Here's agent law again.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I've always maintained that for somebody on death row, death
is easy. They get out of prison. What's harder is
sitting there in yourself for twenty three hours a day.
Sounds a little cruel, and maybe it is. That's just
how I feel. Every now and then you get a
case that you read about and the guy gets the
death penalty when it is safe involves children like it
did in this case, you're just like, yeah, good.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Dorothy, Sandy's youngest wanted to confront Floyd to tell him
flat out how much he had taken from her family.
She never got to know her oldest sister, Susie. Dorothy
was born after Susie was already gone.
Speaker 7 (25:03):
Excuse my language, bless So when that motherfucker goes to die,
I want to be in a window holding my sister's
picture up along with my nephew and watch him take
his last breast and tell him flat out you took
this from me, and I never got it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I even wrote to Floyd in prison. I just wanted
to understand, but what he responded was basically incomprehensible. Floyd
may have been sentenced to death, but he was never
put to death. His defense consistently argued that he was
too mentally unstable to face the death penalty. Other people
I spoke to who knew him said his mental illness
(25:40):
was among the most pronounced I had ever seen on
death row. Floyd died of natural causes in January twenty
twenty three. He was seventy nine. Of all the people
in this story, Floyd got to die of old age.
The Tampa Bay Times wrote about his death. They listed
off his string of crimes, Sheryl's murderer, Michael's kidnapping, and
(26:01):
references erratic and angry behavior. A Florida state attorney was
quoted in Floyd's obituary. He said, a better thing couldn't
have happened to a worse person. The news made its
way to Agent Lam.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And I had promised him, Floyd, You're going to die
in prison, and I remember one of my first reactions was, well,
it's a promise I kept.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Sandy was elated to hear that he had died. Hallelujah.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
He sure ain't going to have him.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
By the time Amy, Sandy's third daughter, heard of Floyd's passing,
she was already trying to move past him.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
He didn't deserve the right for me to think about him,
to care about him, to give two sticks in the
dirt of what his life was like or anything.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
He didn't have that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Rate, So I don't let it bother me.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Floyd was never held accountable for most of what he
did to Sandy's family, How he separated a boy from
his mother, how he did it again when he murdered
Susie and left Michael motherless. When Steve got adopted and
ended up with Mary's family, He ended up in the dark,
consumed by feeling of not being wanted.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
Do you know what Franklin did with Stephen That was
that's bullshit. Nobody, and I mean nobody should never be
taken away from their mother at all. And then you know,
he gets robbed of knowing his birth mother.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
That left Steve at a crossroads last week, left him
he hadn't made up his mind if he wanted to
keep getting to know Sindy, if that one could ever
be repaired. I'd spent so many years think employd might
have killed Steve. When I found out he was still alive,
it was an absolute miracle. That's one of the reasons
why this case is so unusual for me. Usually I
(27:53):
find dead people and reuniting with their families, but with Steve,
I was trying to figure out how to help him heal.
There are no physical marks on Steve like they were
on Shril or Susie. But Floyd didn't just leave wounds
that you can see. He was an emotional wrecking bomb
for Steve and his siblings. They have to decide if
(28:14):
they want to choose each other as family now in
middle age, or if they want to let Sleep and
Dows lie because they just can't see a path forward together.
It's the biggest question of this entire podcast. Next time
on Hello John Doe. Steve's sister Amy grew up with
(28:36):
their mother, Sandy, but by the time she was a teenager,
she left home and had planned on never looking back.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
I feel like he's a little bit jealous because I
had our actual mom, and I'm jealous that he didn't
have her. Instead of being part of the family, he
was given away, when in all reality it saved his life.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our
executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First
to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and
produced by Kate Michkin. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
(29:23):
She is also nio on Home Media's executive editor. Our
executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Masarura. Sound design and
mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Dot Sessions. Frendall Faulton is our fact checker. Our production
(29:46):
manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media. Dylan Fagan
is our executive producer. Special thanks to Adelia Ruben at
NEI on Hum and Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at
iHeart Media. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about
names at NamUs dot com. The number for the National
Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one eight
hundred the loss that's one eight hundred eight four three
(30:09):
five six seven eight. The National Sexual Assault Hotline from
the Rate of Use and Incest National Network is one
eight hundred six five six four six seven three. Okay, guys,
this is the end of the show. If you didn't
like it, don't do anything. But if you did like it,
you make sure that you rate and review the show.
It helps more people to find it and hear this
(30:30):
wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.
Hey there, I want to give you a heads up
that this episode may be upsetting for some listeners. Another gruesome,
murderous part of this.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Family story previously on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I just wanted the answers who was Sharon Marshall? The
DNA match both the father and the mother, and it
came back as a confirmation that the girl who was
killed in Oklahoma City was Suzanne Sevakas.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
I just completely burned down, completely burned down.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I sometimes have this feeling that's hard to explain, but
I'm gonna try. It's almost like there's a thin veil
between life and death, and sometimes I can see right
through it. It's part of why I got into this
business of trying to find the names of John Doe's.
The dead don't feel that far away from me. They're
close by. My brother and sister died so after being born,
(01:01):
they're still with me. And so were the two missing
boys I became obsessed with back in two thousand and four.
At that point, I was thirty four, raising two boys
alone and working on the Dough Network. Some days my
mind would wander and I'd find myself thinking about the
two missing boys. All things considered, I guess the six
year old was alive and the infant was dead, just
(01:23):
because it's hard to keep an infant alive. But eventually
the infant, Steve Patterson called me. I don't even know
how I got your remember he picked up the phone.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I mean it was just one in a billion.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I guess, But the six year old Michael never did.
His mama was Susie Sevegas and he went by Michael Hughes.
When I think of that thin veil between life and death,
I'm not sure which side he's on. He was in
first grade when he vanished. News cruise taught to some
of his classmates. He was in a class that I fell.
(01:59):
He's not there anymore. Now he's not where is he?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So may chook them.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Sometimes I look at Michael's Doone Network page. He has
this big toothy grin with missing teeth. Makes me think
of my own sons and then my grandsons. Other days
I google stories of men trying to find their parents,
or look through John Doe's And then there are days
(02:25):
that I wake up and think he's gone. I'm going
to tell you what happened to him. Then you can
decipher yourself which side of the bell he's on. My
name is Todd Matthews and this is Hello John Doe.
A sleuth, a family, and a serial killer. The story
of a family torn apart by tragedy and my quest
(02:46):
to bring them back together. Chapter seven, The Other Missing Boy.
After Susie died, Floyd went to prison. Officials had finally
figured out had been a fugitive on the run since
nineteen seventy three. So their child, Michael, ended up in
foster care. He was a sweet toddler of brown hair
(03:09):
and brown eyes, scaring his forehead, and two little crooked
bottom teeth.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So Michael was in the custody of two of the
nicest people walk in the face of the your Marlin,
Earnest beIN.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's former FBI agent Scott Lobb. He was tasked with
figuring out what happened to Michael after his mama died.
The Beans were an Oklahoma couple. Here they are in
a local program talking about how they started fostering kids.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
We were at church and they had these two adorable
little boys, and one day was talking to him and
they said, oh, they're foster children. And we had no
idea what foster children was all about. They told us
that it was to the Department of Human Services and
that you just take kids in and love them like
you do your own, and I thought we can do that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
The Beans were gone to foster eighty children, if you
can believe it, including young Michael Hughes. They took him
in May one, nineteen ninety. He had just celebrated his
second birthday. Apparently, a caseworker told the Beans he still
drank out of a bottle and only drank pepsi. He
seemed to have some developmental delays and sometimes through epic tantrums.
(04:20):
For a two year old, Michael had already had it tough,
but the Beans gave him all the love they could.
Over the next four years, Michael started to come into
his own, growing physically and emotionally. This story has so
many examples of chosen family. This is one. The Beans
chose Michael as their family, and he chose them too.
(04:43):
But throughout those four years, Franklin Ployce still got to
see Michael, even though he was now in prison. The
Beans had to bring Michael to the el Renal Federal
Correctional Institute.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Floyd would get I don't know, an hour or two
with them.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
The Beans said Michael hated every minute of it. He
go hide and talk about that mean man. But in
nineteen ninety three, floyd sentence was up, he was a
free man and he wanted to pick up where he
left on. By then, Michael is in kindergarten.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
When he gets out of prison, he starts trying to
regain custody in Michael through the court system and through public,
through media, and he's being turned down at every point.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Floyd was persistent though he wanted Michael.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Finally, somebody got wise and requested that essentially a DNA
test be done and it turns out Floyd's not the father,
and so immediately the Bean family filed for adoption.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The DNA test results effectively stop Michael's visits with Floyd,
which apparently got under Floyd's skin.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Floyd knew from his interactions with Michael in the prison
setting that he had a real love for the Bean family.
He couldn't handle this. To him, Michael was his.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
The Beans knew something us up. Merlebane even said she
saw Floyd looking around their house and a pickup truck.
So they acted swiftly, trying to file for adoption as
quickly as possible, but right before the adoption was finalized
in nineteen ninety four, Floyd did something drastic awful. On
(06:21):
September twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Michael Hughes went into his
first grade classroom in Indian Meridian Elementary School the way
he did every day. He wore black high top sneakers,
wore red and blue shorts. He carried in a Laddin backpack.
While Michael was in school, Floyd left his halfway house
in Oklahoma City wearing a wrinkled suit. He had a gun.
(06:42):
He showed up at the front desk of Indian Meridian
Elementary School. This is what he said, according to news reports,
think I had better tea. I got a gun in
my pocket and I better show it to you. I'm
ready to die and if you don't help me, you
won't live. Took Michael out of his classroom and he
took Principal James Davis too. He forced them both into
(07:05):
the principal's pickup truck and made him drive into the woods. There,
he tied the principal to a tree. Then he got
back into the pickup truck with Michael and drove away.
It was the last time anyone saw Michael, not knowing
(07:27):
what happened to him, destroyed the Bean family. Michael, who
we were in the process of getting the papers and everything,
was kidnapped, and after that we said no more foster kids.
There was a nationwide search. The Beans tapped, the newspapers
got on TV. They pleaded keep an eye out for Michael. Franklin. Floyd,
claiming to be the boy's father, abducted him, even tied
(07:50):
up the school's principal in the woods nearby. Michael Hughes
still hasn't been seen since after the kidnap him Floyd
Brown on one more time. A few months later, Floyd,
then fifty one years old, moved to Louisville and got
a job as a used car salesman. His neighbors observed
some weird details. He wore second hand clothing and wanted
(08:12):
to stay up all night. One neighbor said he always
wanted to come over and watch the fugitive on TV.
On his second day at the dealership, couriers delivering an
express mail package to Floyd, except they were really undercover agents.
Mark Anci remembers at the time he was an assistant
US attorney in the Western District of Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Floyd had applied for a license under one of his aliases,
and he had applied in Kentucky. So that's how we
were able to locate him in Kentucky. He had slipped
up by trying to get an id under one of
his old aliases.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
They arrested him in charge him with the kidnapping of
both Michael and his principal.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
The trial actually started in April of nineteen ninety five,
about ten days before the Oaklhom City bombing, which actually
occurred right across the street from the courthouse where we
tried Franklin Floyd.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Mark Anty was one of the prosecutors on the case.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And the trial became a little interesting because Franklin Floyd
decided to waive his right to a jury trial.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Mark Skiz Floyd might have figured a Jerry might not
be so friendly to him, especially because no one knew
or Michael was.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
There was another interesting twist to the case. In addition
to him waving his right to a jury trial, he
really wanted to represent himself.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
This was unconventional, kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Judge Alie actually been over backwards to assist Franklin Floyd.
You typically can't have a lawyer and argue the case yourself.
It's one of the other. It's called hybrid representation. Judge
Alli allowed some form of hybrid representation to placate Franklin Floyd.
(10:04):
One of Franklin Floyd's key defenses is, I can't be guilty.
I am the father of Michael Hughes. So we put
on DNA evidence to disprove that he was the biological
father of Michael Hughes. And of course he countered by
suggesting that he was sort of the de facto father
or grandfather.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
You heard that right. He was simultaneously arguing that he
was both the father and grandfather Michael, which wasn't true.
But Mark and the other prosecutor did call Michael's real father.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
To testify, Greg Higgs, who was actually Michael's biological father,
very normal, married and had his own children and knew
nothing about Michael. He did not know that he was
Michael's father, and had noted to us that if he
would have known that there was this whole custody spew
(11:00):
dude and that Sharon had died, he would have gladly
adopted Michael Wess his own.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Sorry, my god. His real father would have taken him
in had he known the trial didn't last longer than
a week. Trial's go much quicker and you don't have
a jury. After twenty years of running from similar crimes,
Floyd couldn't run anymore. He was finally locked up on
(11:26):
federal charges and sentenced to fifty two years for the
kidnappings and other related crimes.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
There's no parole in the federal system, so when you
get a fifty year plus sentence, it's effectively life without parole.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Franklin Floyd may have been caught partaking Michael and principal
James Davis, but authorities still wanted to know where the
boy was. By the early twenty tens, it was a
cold case and the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children was doing a cold case review, so they asked
Agent Scott Lobbed to reopen the case. That's how he,
an agent, ended up interview in Franklin Floyd. He was
(12:02):
trying to jumpstart the case for the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children. Moving it forward meant finding out
who Sharon Marshall was and what happened to her. It
also meant figuring out what happened to.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Michael and at the time of Michael's disappearance, they had
local police involved in the matter, but at the time
it was still not known that Franklin Floyd had taken
him across state lines, and that is an element that
is necessary for a prosecution of kidnapping at the federal level.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
A Sena's agent Lobbin first started asking Floyd flipped out,
started rambling.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
We're FBI agents. We're here to talk to you about
Michael Hughes. And I said, I've reopened the investigation. And
he looked at me and says, what, I appreciate it
if you close it?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Oh, hell No. Seems to me that Floyd thought if
he asked very nicely, the FBI could close their cold
case investigation into a missing kid. They just didn't bat any.
They took Floyd back to the day kidnapped Michael from
Indian Meridian Elementaries. After leaving Principal Davis tied up in
the woods. Where did he take Michael? He said, they
(13:06):
drove along Interstate thirty five outside of Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
And we had walked him down Interstate thirty five and
Floyd said, we ended up in Dallas. We want to
know what happened between Oklahoma City and Dallas.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Now he had admitted to crossing state lines. But what
he's about to ment to next, it's really hard to
listen to. Floyd and Michael were in the pickup truck together.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
According to Floyd, Michael was asking about the beans, how
he wanted to go back and see Mama Bean, and
he was just acting up on the drive down there,
and Floyd said he got to the point where he
knew he could never be with Michael again. He knew
every law enforcement official in the state of Oklahoma was
searching for him.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Think about all the witnesses at the elementary school. Plus
it was now publicly known that Floyd wasn't Michael's father.
He couldn't pass Michael off his he is the way
he did Susie. On the way out of town, Floyd
said he stopped to get a few things.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, I stopped at a convenience store in Dell City,
which is a suburban Oklahoma City, and bought him, you know,
some some drinks and some knickknacks.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He called them agents for and lawber. Following Floyd's pie,
as he described what happened.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
You passed the crossroads mall, he goes well, that's that's
where I handed Michael off. No you did in Floyd.
At this point, we're just not even putting up with that,
and we say he didn't he took him. And Nate
jumps in at this point said, you know, we have
the starting point, we have the any point. We want
to know what happened in the middle.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Floyd seemed like he was ready to answer. He asked
for a pencil and a piece of paper.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
He draws a map and it's Interseate thirty five. We
walk him down that road? What did you do? And
then Floyd goes you know, he just goes on forever,
talking about how they stopped.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
They both got out of the car in a brushy,
secluded area off the side of the road.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
They pray, they talk, they pray some more, and he's crying.
It's all crocodile tears, but he's crying, he's moaning, and
I at this point I knew he had him. I
slammed my hand down on the tabletop and said how
did you kill him? And he startled him. He said,
(15:27):
don't you do that in reference to me slapped my
hand on the table. I'm asking how'd you kill him?
Nate's asking him, why did you kill him? Now, I'm
just repeating myself, And he's looking off to his right,
crying and so forth. And he finally turned and looked
at me. Tears are gone, and he says, I shot
him twice in the back of the head to make
(15:47):
it real quick.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
After years of deception, Floyd finally told the truth. It
was worse than I ever imagined to waste. He could
have just let the Beans raise Michael. His real father,
Greg was even willing to raise him. Agent Lob has
a theory on why Floyd would kill Michael.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
This is what I think, this is what Floyd said.
But in his selfish mind, he said, well I can't
have him. Nobody's going to have him, and he killed him.
Very heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
For allmost two decades, no one had known what happened
to Michael, not the Bean family, not Sandy and her kids.
Now Franklin Floyd finally gave them an answer. There's a
comfort in having a resolution after so many years of
searching for clues, and yet there was no sense of
comfort at the end of this.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
You know, a little kid lost his life, So it
wasn't really it wasn't a high five moment. You know
it just it was. We got the answers.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The next step was getting photographs of the region to
try to figure out where the murder had happened. These
clues might help them find Michael's body.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
We took a couple members of the evidence response team
from the office down there with us just do a
kind of a cursory survey, an initial survey, and we
decided we've got to go back and talk to Floyd.
We want to really zero in on where because it's
a big piece of property where this happened. And so
(17:18):
we did. In January of twenty fifteen, we went back
in South Floyd for the last time.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
A few months later, a full team descended on that
area in Oklahoma. There was an evidence response tane, an anthropologist,
and a state forensic doctor.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And we go down there. We picked out an area
based on Floyd's description of where we thought that the
murder happened, and we staked off maybe a two thousand
square foot area. They had cautioned us, the anthropologist and
the forensic person from the state, that you're not going
to find it any human matter.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
It's because of something else. I really hate thinking about
the area where Michael was shot as a high population
of wild hogs.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
We sat there for two days, eight hours, ten hours
a day, just sifting dirt looking for something, and we
didn't find anything at all.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
My heart sank when I heard they didn't find a
body or even bones. But but that remains. I figured
we didn't know for sure that Michael was dead. Maybe
there's hope. Agent Lomb thought otherwise.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
I believe Floyd killed Michael where he said he did.
And I say that because in interviewing Floyd, you're looking
for indicators that somebody's lying to you, and with Floyd,
he was lying to us all the time. But we
knew when he was telling the truth called almost a
truth tell and there is no doubt in my mind
(18:48):
that Floyd was telling the truth in how he killed
Michael and where he killed Michael. And then there's people
who think Michael still living and walking the earth somewhere.
I just I don't believe that at all. I just
don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
I guess I'd just like to hear it from Michael.
I know it sounds strange, but I'm in a holding
pattern until.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I see a body.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I need to see it so that it can release me,
and now I'm the sleuth in this story. I can't
even imagine how Michael's biological family thinks about his disappearance.
So I called up Sandy to ask her about her grandson.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Do I think Michael's life? I mean you and you
and I disagree about this time, but I don't think
Michael's alive.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I just want him to.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Be I would love for him to be alive. But
I know what a temper Floyd had. Yeah, and if
he thought he was disrespected, it's hard to tell him what.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
He would do.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
It really is we disagree.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I don't think we really disagree so much as it
is that just I think we both hope yes, and
I hope pretty heavy. So I still don't want to
give up.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
I haven't given up either.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So Floyd landed behind bars for kidnapping Michael because he
couldn't or wouldn't let him grow up with the beans,
but that kidnapping was not what put him on death row.
In the early two thousands of Florida, jury found Floyd
guilty of first degree murder. Believe it or not, it
wasn't the death of Michael or his mama, Susie Sevacas.
There was a third victim. Remember I told you that
(20:24):
Susie was a dancer to strip club called Mon's Venus.
That's where she met her friend, Cheryl Comesso. Cheryl had
very long black hair and lots of photos. It's kind
of teased, very nineteen eighties. A lot of people said
she was gorgeous and Italian and wanted to be a model.
Mon's Venus was just going to be a stepping stone
for her. Couple of times a week she would come
(20:45):
over to Floyd and Susie's two bedroom trailer. They all
hung out. She got close to Susie and apparently talked
to her about leaving Floyd. A lot of people that
worked at Mon's Venus talked to Susie about it. Daniel
Floyd was controlling and creepy. By this point. Susie was
about twenty years old. As I told you a couple
of chapters ago, Sheryl went missing in nineteen eighty nine,
(21:07):
leaving only a red Corvette behind. Six years later, a
landscaper come across the remains off Interstate two seventy five
in Florida. For years, she was Jane Doe I two
seventy five, but with a lot of detective work, authorities
finally identified her.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And they were able to identify the victim of Cheryl Comesso.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Investigators then had to try to figure out who killed her.
They suspected Floyd because he hung out with her in Florida,
but didn't have enough to put him away on just
their association with one another. But in a matter of
time the case had a breakthrough. A karma canny was
doing some repairs on a pickup truck, the one Floyd
(21:47):
ran away with. Michael Innn here's the agent law again.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
They found the vehicle Franklin Floyd used to get away
from Oklahoma in a parking lot in Dallas, Texas have
believed a wonderbread speaking factory.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
They put it up on a lift and that's when
it was discovered that there were a number of photographs
taped to the gas tank of that.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Truck, more than three dozen of them, all of young
women in various states of undress.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And it was pretty obvious to me and all of
us when we saw those photos that these were sort
of Franklin Floyd's trophies because there was a lot of
incriminating photographs, including photographs of Sharon Marshall was.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
A little girl.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yantie suspens. Floyd put them under his car because he
couldn't stand to get rid of his trophies. Maybe he
thought he'd come back and get them someday. Either way,
they confirmed the unimaginable that Floyd had been abused in
his step daughter since childhood when he kidnapped Susie, which.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Confirmed our suspicion that he was a pedophile. There were
also another photo or two of women that we never hadid.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Other photographs showed a woman partially dressed and she had
been beaten. It was Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
They had found a body, skeletal remains of a woman
a few years earlier in St. Petersburg area. They were
able to take the clothing and wash it. And when
you look at the photos they uploaded, and you saw
the pink or the purple bikini in the striped shirt
(23:29):
and compared it with the photos that we found, you
could tell us the exact same clothing.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
What's in these photographs honestly makes me see. But this
evidence was crucial in the State of Florida's case against
Franklin ploy.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
These were polaroids and he was very clear not to
show himself in any of them, although there was one
good thumb photo in one of the photographs that I
know that the police in Florida used to their advantage
to try to identify him.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I don't know why Cheryl was murdered. No one does,
but there's reason to think that she probably got in
between Floyd and Susie. And as far as you know,
no other murder.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Victims, well, as far as we know, I think we
all suspect there are more.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
By the time Floyd was sentence in Cheryl's death, he
was already locked up for other crimes, including the nineteen
ninety four Michael Hughes kidnapping. Here's agent law again.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I've always maintained that for somebody on death row, death
is easy. They get out of prison. What's harder is
sitting there in yourself for twenty three hours a day.
Sounds a little cruel, and maybe it is. That's just
how I feel. Every now and then you get a
case that you read about and the guy gets the
death penalty when it is safe involves children like it
did in this case, you're just like, yeah, good.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Dorothy, Sandy's youngest wanted to confront Floyd to tell him
flat out how much he had taken from her family.
She never got to know her oldest sister, Susie. Dorothy
was born after Susie was already gone.
Speaker 7 (25:03):
Excuse my language, bless So when that motherfucker goes to die,
I want to be in a window holding my sister's
picture up along with my nephew and watch him take
his last breast and tell him flat out you took
this from me, and I never got it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I even wrote to Floyd in prison. I just wanted
to understand, but what he responded was basically incomprehensible. Floyd
may have been sentenced to death, but he was never
put to death. His defense consistently argued that he was
too mentally unstable to face the death penalty. Other people
I spoke to who knew him said his mental illness
(25:40):
was among the most pronounced I had ever seen on
death row. Floyd died of natural causes in January twenty
twenty three. He was seventy nine. Of all the people
in this story, Floyd got to die of old age.
The Tampa Bay Times wrote about his death. They listed
off his string of crimes, Sheryl's murderer, Michael's kidnapping, and
(26:01):
references erratic and angry behavior. A Florida state attorney was
quoted in Floyd's obituary. He said, a better thing couldn't
have happened to a worse person. The news made its
way to Agent Lam.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And I had promised him, Floyd, You're going to die
in prison, and I remember one of my first reactions was, well,
it's a promise I kept.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Sandy was elated to hear that he had died. Hallelujah.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
He sure ain't going to have him.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
By the time Amy, Sandy's third daughter, heard of Floyd's passing,
she was already trying to move past him.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
He didn't deserve the right for me to think about him,
to care about him, to give two sticks in the
dirt of what his life was like or anything.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
He didn't have that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Rate, So I don't let it bother me.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Floyd was never held accountable for most of what he
did to Sandy's family, How he separated a boy from
his mother, how he did it again when he murdered
Susie and left Michael motherless. When Steve got adopted and
ended up with Mary's family, He ended up in the dark,
consumed by feeling of not being wanted.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
Do you know what Franklin did with Stephen That was
that's bullshit. Nobody, and I mean nobody should never be
taken away from their mother at all. And then you know,
he gets robbed of knowing his birth mother.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
That left Steve at a crossroads last week, left him
he hadn't made up his mind if he wanted to
keep getting to know Sindy, if that one could ever
be repaired. I'd spent so many years think employd might
have killed Steve. When I found out he was still alive,
it was an absolute miracle. That's one of the reasons
why this case is so unusual for me. Usually I
(27:53):
find dead people and reuniting with their families, but with Steve,
I was trying to figure out how to help him heal.
There are no physical marks on Steve like they were
on Shril or Susie. But Floyd didn't just leave wounds
that you can see. He was an emotional wrecking bomb
for Steve and his siblings. They have to decide if
(28:14):
they want to choose each other as family now in
middle age, or if they want to let Sleep and
Dows lie because they just can't see a path forward together.
It's the biggest question of this entire podcast. Next time
on Hello John Doe. Steve's sister Amy grew up with
(28:36):
their mother, Sandy, but by the time she was a teenager,
she left home and had planned on never looking back.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
I feel like he's a little bit jealous because I
had our actual mom, and I'm jealous that he didn't
have her. Instead of being part of the family, he
was given away, when in all reality it saved his life.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our
executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First
to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and
produced by Kate Michkin. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
(29:23):
She is also nio on Home Media's executive editor. Our
executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Masarura. Sound design and
mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Dot Sessions. Frendall Faulton is our fact checker. Our production
(29:46):
manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media. Dylan Fagan
is our executive producer. Special thanks to Adelia Ruben at
NEI on Hum and Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at
iHeart Media. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about
names at NamUs dot com. The number for the National
Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one eight
hundred the loss that's one eight hundred eight four three
(30:09):
five six seven eight. The National Sexual Assault Hotline from
the Rate of Use and Incest National Network is one
eight hundred six five six four six seven three. Okay, guys,
this is the end of the show. If you didn't
like it, don't do anything. But if you did like it,
you make sure that you rate and review the show.
It helps more people to find it and hear this
(30:30):
wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.
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