Secrets, murders and kidnappings. The girl in the picture, a look back at the multifaceted crime

Oklahoma City, 1990: On the night of April 25, several men saw a pile of broken glass along an abandoned road. A little further away, the lifeless body of a young blonde woman is still lying on its side. The latter is obviously crushed, swings between life and death and is immediately transferred to the nearest hospital. Suddenly, a man, Clarence Hughes, comes to her bedside. This is his wife Tonya, a 21-year-old stripper, the mother of their 2-year-old son. A few days after hospitalization, he died from his injuries.

Very quickly the unhappy husband turns into a suspect in the eyes of the authorities. Suspected of a role in his wife’s murder, he finds himself removing custody of his child, Michael, who is then in foster care, and demands a paternity test. Although this turns out to be negative, indicating that Clarence Hughes and the child are not related, investigators contact the missing person’s mother. The latter, surprised, assures that he lost his daughter 20 years ago, when she was only 18 months old. Then the mystery thickens around this young stranger. who was he really? Who killed him? Was she safe with her husband?

The documentary was released on July 6 on Netflix The girl in the picture. crime in the abyss dives into the abyss of a case with many twists and turns between murder, rape and kidnapping. Based on investigative journalist Matt Birkbeck’s research, the film brings to life all the elements of the investigation from his book; beautiful baby which allowed the case to be solved almost 27 years later.

In the video: the trailer The girl in the picture. crime in the abyss On Netflix

From Sharon Marshall to Tonya Hughes

In 1994, four years after the death of the person posing as Tonya Hughes, the case took a turn. Clarence Hughes, who no longer has custody of his child, enters his alleged son’s elementary school and kidnaps him. The images of the man and the little boy on television are broadcast on all news channels, revealing the murder of his wife. Goodness, because that’s how Jenny Fisher, who lives in Forest Park, Georgia, recognizes the face of her former high school best friend, one Sharon Marshall.

In 1984, six years before the murder, the two friends were both high school students in the eastern US city of Forest Park. Sharon Marshall was a promising teenager, a “gifted student” who agreed with her classmates. “Brilliant”, “beautiful”, who “loved the rejected”, they said about him. No one knew that the blonde girl was the victim of an abusive father named Warren Marshall, also known as Clarence Hughes. One fine day, after a student confided in her friend Jenny Fisher that she was pregnant by his boyfriend, she disappeared with him, who was pretending to be her father at the time. Without leaving a trace.

Franklin Delano Floyd, the repeat offender

In 1990, while investigators try to piece together the puzzle by going back to the various identities of Tonya-Hughes-Sharon-Marshall, they also continue their research into the two faces of the husband’s father. A man wanted nationwide for the kidnapping of baby Michael is finally exposed when he tries to cash out his life insurance, which itself is linked to a social security number. Clarence-Hughes-Warren-Marshall is actually named Franklin Delano Floyd. He is a repeat offender, on the run since 1973, already convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault and robbery. About two months after the child was kidnapped, he was arrested alone in Louisville, Kentucky.

Apart from the arrest, Franklin Delano Floyd does not say a word. Authorities can’t find baby Michael and struggle to unravel the mystery of his mother’s true identity. It would be necessary to wait until 2015, during an interrogation with the FBI, meeting with agents Scott Lobb and Nate Furr, for Lloyd to finally reveal who was hiding under the mask of a young woman.

Susan Marie Sevakis

In 1970, forty-five years ago, Franklin Delano Floyd was already wanted by the police and called himself Brandon Williams. That same year, the fugitive met a certain Sandy Chipman, a frustrated single mother who already had four children from a previous marriage. Among them is the young blond, underage girl who baptized Susan Marie Sevakis. Franklin Delano Floyd offers Sandi Chipman to marry him and thus help him with the custody of his children. But in 1975, when the latter was arrested by the police and sentenced to 30 days in prison for fraud, the criminal, taking advantage of his absence, kidnapped the four children.

Back in 2015, on FBI camera, Franklin Delano Floyd explains that he left Sandi’s three children, Amy, Alison and Philip, at home before kidnapping baby Susan. He initially passed her off as his daughter under the name of Sharon Marsal. But a few years later, after learning that she is pregnant by a boyfriend, Floyd decides to run away, make her his wife and raise the baby, thus becoming the Hughes family. For many years, the mother and wife, who was renamed Tonya Hughes, will be subjected to rape, beatings and prostitution.

To listen to: the newsroom podcast

Franklin Delano Floyd will confess that he killed little Michael with two bullets in the head, and that in the first hours of his kidnapping. To date, the police have not found the body, the search is still ongoing. Floyd, however, denies the murder of Susan Marie Sevakis, leaving some mystery on this tragedy. Sentenced to death, he remains on death row at the Florida Union Correctional Facility.