CHAPTER SIX: The Investigation

Hey, their listeners, I want to give you a heads up that this episode will discuss sexualists out. Please take care while listening. Previously on Hello John Doe, she had.

A full ride to Georgia Tech. That was all she ever wanted.

Yeah, it was after that night, which is never slid. Third, she just disappeared.

We didn't know at the time. The FBI didn't that with any evidence that Franklin Floyd had kidnapped her, Sharon Marshall. She was found the victim of a hit and run accident in Oklahoma City and died five days later in a hospital.

Usually the FBI doesn't investigate hit and runs, but this one was like a tree with gnarled and braided branches. According to the police report, a woman was walking at night toward a convenience store. She was listening to music on stereo headphones. She was hit by a car turning onto the highway. It was April of nineteen ninety in Oklahoma City. The woman was taken to the hospital where

But I also wanted that answer to who was Sharon Marshall.

He didn't know it then, but finding Sharon's real identity would take him all over the country, from Oklahoma and Florida to Michigan, finally to Virginia. He'd have to cut through all this young woman's alienses to figure out the name on her birth certificate. This investigation would lead him to Sandy's doorstep. He'd be the man to tell Sandy what happened to her little girl decades after she went missing. The first he needed to talk to the man who

I am a pilot for a charter company here in the Oklahoma City area.

So it's no surprise that during his time at the FBI in Oklahoma City he loved getting out into the field and getting answers digging. Agent Lob is affable and he cares a lot about his work. He talks about the cases he's tackled like each one's kept him up at night. I know that feeling. There's something really gentle about his demeanor. But he's also a zero bullshit kind of guy. He ended up fighting for children who were victims of violent crimes, even if it ripped his guts out time after time.

It's part of my job, and a lot of people in the FBI don't want to work crimes against children. I can understand why children can't fight for themselves, and I was more than more than willing to be that person when they were lady in any way, shape or form to work those investigations and see them to a conclusion.

This is where he was when he inherited the Sharon Marshall case.

The actual folders for the case, I would say would stack about six feet high. It's one of the most unique cases I was ever involved with.

About twenty thirteen, Floyd wasn't hard to find. He was sitting on Florida's death row serving time for the first degree murder of a different young woman in Florida before he met Floyd. Agent Lob needed to know the Sharon Marshall case inside and out, know it better than Floyd did, so he could spot where he might be telling the truth.

And so I spent the better part of a year preparing for that interview by pouring through the case file, reading every report of interview, listening to every jail call, watching every videotape that I could find of him talking to the press.

He also knew that at the FBI Oklahoma sent a request to Florida every year to see if Floyd might want to talk. Scott read up on those reports too.

They were one paragraph reports because Floyd just wasn't interested in talking.

Agent lab was convinced that he could get Floyd to agree to a meeting, but that still didn't mean he'd tell him anything useful.

I knew from everything that I'd studied that he liked to misdirect, He liked to take you down what we call rabbit holes, and so that preparation to approach that interview was huge. It was key to conducting that successful interview with Franklin Floyd. And I also knew that this wasn't going to be a one day thing where we show up, so I had requested to be there for the entire week.

Plus. He tapped a colleague, Nate for He was a skilled interviewer, so skilled the FBI shipped him all over the country to teach interrogation classes, and he was exactly who Agent lab want him by his side on a high stakes assignment like this one. So in the spring of twenty fourteen, the FBI agents flew to Florida. Agent Lobb had a lot of questions for Franklin Floyd, but he knew he had to focus on that central mystery,

Further prosecution for a guy on death row would be a to me, a waste of resources, a waste of money. There might have been some perhaps some sense of justice was delivered for victims of Franklin Floyd, but I just wanted.

The answers not to mention. At this point, Agent Lobb didn't know Susie Sabakas aka Sharon Marshall aka and Tanya Tadlock had been kidnapped when she was six years old. He didn't know she was taken across state lines, which would have made it a federal crime. But decades later, Agent law going to find out who she really was and then figure out if Floyd could have been the one to kill her, and.

If so, we want to know why did Floyd kill her.

That's what was on Agent Lob in first minds when they showed up at the Union Correctional Institution in Florida in May of twenty fourteen. The trip ittself is pretty straightforward. They showed up, go through security, surrendered their phones, walked down Death Row and went through security a second time, and then walked into a conference room.

Nate Knight had game planned this before, and it was decided that we walked into this room. We instantly knew we were going to rearrange it well. In order to conduct a really good interview, you don't want to have a barrier between you and the person you're talking to, such as a table or a desk, so we pushed the table up against a wall.

When Floyd walked through the door, his appearance surprised Agent lob.

Honestly, he looked feeble, really, and he's not an imposing man physically, but he started talking and he didn't stop.

He also seemed fairly can confused. For about a decade he had remained on death roat, but wasn't put today because his lawyer argued that he wasn't mentally confident.

He thought we were his attorneys. Once we got him call him down a little bit and started talking to him, we spent really that first morning with him up up to lunch. We spent really just trying to build some rapport with him.

Agents lobbin for watch Floyd carefully taking it all in.

His chair at a forty five degree angle, and I'm sitting at forty you know, at an angle that I'm need a need with him face to face, so I could sit there close to him and conduct that interview. To make him feel a little bit uncomfortable with that proximity, he would try to lean one way or the other. I would lean the same way as he did. I would mirror his behavior. I'm intently listening to every word he says, trying to stay a step or two ahead of him to formulate my next question.

So that's what they did, playing this real life game of chess, trying to anticipate Floyd's next move. Even with all this preparation, the agents weren't getting much out of Floyd. For so long, Floyd had kept up appearances that Susie was his daughter named Sharon. Then he told people she was his wife, Tanya. He had taken down these lengthy rabbit holes, losing the plot, and Floyd brushed off any questions about his so called wife.

It was more, what do you care about her? She's dead, she didn't mean anything to me. Things like that.

He had woven so many tales over the years, but now in prison, he stopped pretending he had ever cared. He was callous and combative.

So we go back that first afternoon and Floyd is much the same in his attitude. But things started to change a little bit.

Something was different about this day. Agents asked again about the woman they knew as Sharon Marshall.

He had leaned back, he closed his eyes, kind of lifted his head a little bit, and he was talking about how he had Oh what did he say?

It was some story about Ben in Florida and then going up to New York to visit an old prison buddy and taking this big trip up the coast. It seemed random.

He ends up in the Charlotte area of North Carolina and got a job as a bus driver. I thought he was taking me down another rabbit hole. I'm about to put my hand up to cut him off, and that's when he leaned back, closed his eyes, lifted his head a little bit, and I realized at that point he was recalling facts. And he starts telling us how he was in a truck stop diner wearing his bus

This was the first time Floyd talked about Sandy. He was remembering the past instead of making it up. Floyd talked about Sandy's three daughters and how she had given him up. But Wind, I'm back.

I said, well, tell me about the oldest girl. And he goes, well, that's the one you want to know about. I said, okay, well tell me about her. And he goes, well, I've seen her birth certificate, and I said, okay, where was she born? And he told me she was born in Lavonia, Michigan. And he said her name was Susanne Sevacas.

This is a breakthrough. The agent's had something they could work with. Floyd was finally making sense. Maybe now he has started answering Agent Lobb's other questions.

And we got a knock on the door and our time had ended.

The FBI agents took what they'd learned and went right to work trying to confirm Floyd's story about the oldest girl.

There was a marriage certificate issued for Sandy Brandenburg and a guy named Brandon Cleo Williams, which he had told us in that interview that afternoon that that was the name he was using in Charlotte, and so like, okay, well that's okay, he's telling the truth.

The next day they found the birth certificate. Bloyd alluded to Susann Marie Sebakis born September nineteen sixty nine, the dad, Cliff Sebakas, the mother Sandy.

If we could find the parents, we could get DNA samples and run them against the DNA that Sharon or Suzanne Sevakas had on file from that hit and run accident. And so I think the trooper also told us that the father was still alive and lived in Michigan.

They needed to get to Detroit. If you think it was hard to get a serial killer to tell the truth, imagine going to tell the divorce parents of a missing child that she was now dead.

I can't think of a good way to approach this interview as far as the introduction and how I'm going to relate the information to him that we have and then ask for a DNA sample.

Once Agent slobin Fer got to the Detroit Metro Airport, the met a trooper and went to the home of Susie's dad, and.

I still didn't have a plan. As we were walking in the house, he was a little bit curious because we cold called and there's two FBI agents and state trooper there.

As it turns out, Cliff and Sandy had not taught much since her breakup, so he didn't even realize his daughter and go missing. He certainly didn't know she'd been kidnapped.

And his wife is there with them. They're very nice people. And I started telling him a story about this girl who was known as Sharon Marshall was killed in Oklahoma City and a hit and run accident.

It wasn't ringing any bills.

He had never heard the name before. I go back through her timeline, working in reverse, and he's starting to kind of figure this out at this point, and I said, we believe that Sharon Marshall is your daughter, Suzanne. It was thunderstruck.

And it was something I never did and no parent ever wants to hear their child go through the existence that she had to live for twenty years.

That, of course, his Cliffs of Vegas, Susie's biological father. He'd barely known her, and now it was too late.

It hit him like a ton of bricks, as you can expect.

And of course nothing to be done about it, just kind of the heartbroken. That's about all you can do.

After Sanny and Cliff got divorced, he had seen Susie one time, but that's it.

I think his last contact maybe seventy four, somewhere in the mid seventies, early to mid seventies.

It's like kid hit on the head with a pillow pace full of rocks.

Clip and his second while I've had kids with their own, a boy and a girl. He had built a career in radio and then advertising. This news drop kicked him out of his present life, into the past and into a dark place.

It was very tough.

I lived with it every minute of the day for a good year, and I put it to bed and it comes back up again.

It's Tommy Humilidy.

I wish Clip had known Susie, wished he'd help raise her, been a father to her before she was kidnapped. Cliff wasn't part of Susie's life, but he would forever be a part of her story after her death. Next the fat agents left to track down Susie's mother, the one who'd last seen her, Sandy. On a hot, humid day in July twenty fourteen, agents Lob and fer landed in Norfolk, Virginia. There they rented a car and drove across the bridge tunnel to Newport News, where then knew Sandy was living.

Were like, I'm looking for Sandra Chipman or Sandra Willett. I said, that's my mom.

This time, Agents Lob and for had a plan. They had a photo of Susie sitting on Floyd's lap, and.

It's commonly believed to be a church directory photo, which turned out it was. And I had our photographer in Oklahoma City separate those two, and so I had a picture of just Suzanne and a picture of just Floyd.

It shown it cleft, but got no reaction.

This time was different, and I did say, there's this girl in Oklahoma City and started walking it back and her daughter starts crying. Her daughter immediately realizes where I'm going with this.

I immediately got up and I pulled the picture of my mom and her sister down from the shelf in my bedroom and showed them.

I was like, that's identical.

I cried.

Sandy came into the room and talked to the ay agents orself.

They said, do you know this man?

She says, without any hesitation.

Yeah, and that's Brandon Williams.

And he stole my daughter, Susie. And I thought to myself, well, we got the right place, that's for sure.

And they said, do you know this girl? And I said, that's my daughter. Where's my daughter? And he said she's dead.

I showed her the pictures, Suzanne, and she's crying at this point, and she told her story, and she did say that they were in Dallas, that she had been arrested for writing a hot check at a seven to eleven.

It's the same story she telled me.

And that sounded a little harsh to me for a hot check for I think it was a dollar seven for some diapers, one dollar seven cents. But that's her story. So I'm just taking the notes. And she gets out of jail. This would have been November. I think she went in in October, got out in November of nineteen seventy five, and went back to the apartment that they all shared, and the girls were gone, Floyd was going. She tried to go to the Dallas Police Department. They

It was a lifetime. She saw Susie and the last time she saw Floyd, the FBI was telling her that her daughter was dead.

I just completely broke down, completely broke down.

After she collected Durslail, she had another question about her other missing child.

I said, well, did you find Steve? And they said, who's Steve? I said, Steve's my little boy. Did you find him too? They didn't know anything about Steve.

The timeline didn't make a lot of sense to me of when she was in North Carolina and when that boy was born, and she didn't really have as I remember, a good explanation of what Floyd did with that boy, other than she said he gave him to somebody else living in the same trailer park. I just didn't believe that boy was born at all. So we did some due diligence. We contacted North Carolina, asked about adoption records

God damn it to hell. This explains why I had such a hard time tracking Steve down later on. The FBI didn't think you existed period. Agent Lobb explained this to us that he felt he had done the best he could define Steve.

I don't mean to sound callous about that, but I'm happy that we were able to close that loop.

Agent Lobb even offered to speak to Steve if you wanted to hear the story from him.

You can give him my contact information if he's willing to do it, or if he even wants to do it. I know it's tough what he's gone through. I'm willing to try to answer any questions he might have.

I told Steve about Agent Lob in the File of twenty twenty three. Steve never called him. Scott Lob's exhaustive investigation resolved the big mystery of Sharon Marshall's real name. Now he could figure out what really happened to her and how Floyd got away with it for so long. Before he left, Agent Lob gave Sandy a suggestion, they say, read Matt's book. He was talking about a book called a Beautiful Child, written by Matt Burkbank. It came out in two thousand and four, so a full decade before

The reason I did that and told her to read that book was because Matt Birkbeck had put in a lot of effort into writing that book and really knew the history of how she bounced around the country of Franklin Floyd. I read the book too, but I'm I told her. I said, I'm going to warn you it's not pleasant.

Once the agents left town, Sandy was left alone with their emotions and this new book she was told to read.

After they left, I locked myself in the room, didn't come out for a couple of days. But that's either here nor there. But I was just in total shocks the whole time he was sitting there and telling me that Susie was dead.

She couldn't believe it. She figured Susie was alive and didn't want anything to do with her.

Up until the day the FBI agent showed up at my house. I finally believed Susie was still alive. I mean sometimes I threw the book against the wall. Sometimes I screamed, sometimes I cried. It was like reading a horror story that you're a part of, but not a part of.

No.

I went all the way through it within a couple of days. Then I put it a science for about a month, and then I started going through a piece by t After I read the book, I considered killing myself. No, it wouldn't have helped my other kids, and that's what stopped me.

I can't imagine how hard this must have been for Sandy. For years, she was hoping one day her daughter would come back. Instead, she had a unique kind of heartbreak. People had read Burt Bett's book, had found out what happened to Susie before she had. Sandy felt helpless.

I looked back, and I was in Tulsa and he was in Tulsa with her, and I could what could I have done to find yours that I didn't do when I was in Tulsa.

There were, of course good parts in the book, like how Susie was on her way to Georgia tech.

I did find out she could have done so much more if you weren't involved with her life. When she was five and six and they said what do you want to be when you grow up, she used to say, I want to go to the moon.

In this period of total despair, Sandy found something that helped her.

I wrote journals. I wrote the journal after journal after journal every day. In fact, I'd just gotten rid of a bunch of them because there were things in as Jordaline didn't want my kids to read.

Sandy's husband of thirty years died in August of twenty ten, but she started writing to him anyway.

I would write, I call my husband Sonny, but I would write to Sonny every day, like, you know, all this has happened, and you're not here to help me, and you really know what to do, and I don't know what to do.

It's hard to really say it, but I've told you I'm friends with a lot of dead people. There's something about this work that's made me a little bit spiritual. There's a part of me that believes they're not as far away as we might think. I know what it sounds like, but it's often helped me in these really dark times. I don't know. I guess I just thought maybe Sandy wasn't as far away from her daughter as she thought. If you could say something to Susanne, what would you.

Say to her?

I love you, I miss her. Amy Winkles had the grievous sister she never really knew. She's been thinking about what she would have said to her too.

Sorry I couldn't help her. I wish we wouldn't known each other, but I feel like I should have helped her. But I couldn't help her. I think we would have been good friends. We could have died in trouble together.

With Sandy's DNA in hand, the FBI agents flew back to Oklamba City and sent the samples to a.

Lamb The DNA matter 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.

Getting her name was the crucial part of figuring out what her story was.

She was unknown, and you know, through Nate and I's work, we were able to give her her name back. Even though she's.

Gone for a while. Agent's Lob and for continue to visit Floyd in prison. They were pretty sure he kills Susie, but still didn't know his motive.

That was one thing he just would not talk about on all three visits was why he killed Suzanne. Floyd raised that girl. Floyd had a long long standing tie to that girl, from the time he took her to the time she died in Oklahoma City, and I thought that question would have been the most painful for him. That's why I saved it for last.

The Floyd stayed mom. Agent Lob had his own theories.

Well, there's speculation that she was leaving him, she was running, and that Floyd found her somehow in Oklahoma City. That could be true. I don't think we'll ever know the answer to that question.

When I think of what Floyd got away with, I'm spitting man pissed. He stole Susie from her family, he abused Susie for most of her life and was never held responsible for a murder. It's kind of hard to make peace with that, especially considering Floyd. I also came for Susie's son, the school age boy named Michael, the boy who had gone missing in nineteen ninety four, one of the two I've become obsessed with about twenty years ago. Kidnapping him was the federal crime that put Floyd behind bars.

Doe, Michael Anthony Hughes had been taken to a safe place, Floyd would say.

Floyd would also say the boy was his son.

My nephew.

He was just innocent. It took yeah, thirty to forty five minutes before I finally said, we're not your attorneys, We're FBI agents. We're here to talk to you about Michael. He I said, I've reopened the investigation, and he looked at me and says, what, I appreciate it if you close it.

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