CHAPTER SEVEN: The Other Missing Boy

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.

Family story previously on Hello John Doe.

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.

I just completely burned down, completely burned down.

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, they're still with me. And so were the two missing boys I became obsessed with back in two thousand and four.

I mean it was just one in a billion.

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. He's not there anymore. Now he's not where is he?

So may chook them.

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 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.

So Michael was in the custody of two of the nicest people walk in the face of the your Marlin, Earnest beIN.

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.

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.

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. For a two year old, Michael had already had it tough, but the Beans gave him all the love they could.

Floyd would get I don't know, an hour or two with them.

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.

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.

Floyd was persistent though he wanted Michael.

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.

The DNA test results effectively stop Michael's visits with Floyd, which apparently got under Floyd's skin.

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.

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 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,

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.

They arrested him in charge him with the kidnapping of both Michael and his principal.

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.

Mark Anty was one of the prosecutors on the case.

And the trial became a little interesting because Franklin Floyd decided to waive his right to a jury trial.

Mark Skiz Floyd might have figured a Jerry might not be so friendly to him, especially because no one knew or Michael was.

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.

This was unconventional, kind of bizarre.

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. 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

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.

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 dude and that Sharon had died, he would have gladly adopted Michael Wess his own.

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 federal charges and sentenced to fifty two years for the kidnappings and other related crimes.

There's no parole in the federal system, so when you get a fifty year plus sentence, it's effectively life without parole.

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 trying to jumpstart the case for the National Center for

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.

A Sena's agent Lobbin first started asking Floyd flipped out, started rambling.

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?

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 drove along Interstate thirty five outside of Oklahoma City.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He called them agents for and lawber. Following Floyd's pie, as he described what happened.

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.

Floyd seemed like he was ready to answer. He asked for a pencil and a piece of paper.

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.

They both got out of the car in a brushy, secluded area off the side of the road.

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, 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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 we did. In January of twenty fifteen, we went back in South Floyd for the last time.

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.

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.

It's because of something else. I really hate thinking about the area where Michael was shot as a high population of wild hogs.

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.

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.

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 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 guess I'd just like to hear it from Michael. I know it sounds strange, but I'm in a holding pattern until.

I see a body.

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.

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.

I just want him to.

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.

He would do.

It really is we disagree.

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.

I haven't given up either.

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 Susie was a dancer to strip club called Mon's Venus. That's where she met her friend, Cheryl Comesso. Cheryl had

And they were able to identify the victim of Cheryl Comesso.

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 ran away with. Michael Innn here's the agent law again.

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.

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.

Truck, more than three dozen of them, all of young women in various states of undress.

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.

A little girl.

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.

Confirmed our suspicion that he was a pedophile. There were also another photo or two of women that we never hadid.

Other photographs showed a woman partially dressed and she had been beaten. It was Cheryl.

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 and compared it with the photos that we found, you could tell us the exact same clothing.

What's in these photographs honestly makes me see. But this evidence was crucial in the State of Florida's case against Franklin ploy.

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.

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.

Victims, well, as far as we know, I think we all suspect there are more.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 was among the most pronounced I had ever seen on death row. Floyd died of natural causes in January twenty

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.

Sandy was elated to hear that he had died. Hallelujah.

He sure ain't going to have him.

By the time Amy, Sandy's third daughter, heard of Floyd's passing, she was already trying to move past him.

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.

He didn't have that.

Rate, So I don't let it bother me.

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.

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.

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 find dead people and reuniting with their families, but with Steve, I was trying to figure out how to help him heal.

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.

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. She is also nio on Home Media's executive editor. Our