He Stole a Little Girl — and Decades Later, Murdered the Boy He Fathered with Her By Christina Coulter

Franklin Delano Floyd — the career criminal at the center of Netflix’s 2022 documentary The Girl in the Picture — died on Florida’s death row in 2023 after killing the 6-year-old son he fathered with a girl he abducted as a child.

Born Suzanne Marie Sevakis, she was about 5 years old when Floyd abducted her after briefly marrying her mother.

During her mother’s short jail term for writing bad checks, Floyd vanished with Suzanne and her infant brother Phillip, according to FBI case files and journalist Matt Birkbeck, author of A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon.

Suzanne’s two sisters — Allison and Amy — were later located in foster care, but Suzanne and Phillip remained missing. Phillip was identified decades later when he approached authorities; Suzanne never got to know her real name.

Before meeting Suzanne’s mother, Floyd had already served time in a Georgia prison for kidnapping and raping a 4-year-old girl, according to the FBI.

Over the years, Floyd moved Suzanne across state lines, enrolling her in school under aliases — first as his daughter, then as his wife. In high school, she was known as Sharon Marshall, a standout student who earned a full scholarship to Georgia Tech University for aerospace engineering. She later gave birth to a son, Michael, who was fathered by Floyd, in 1988, according to Esquire.

They relocated to Tampa, where Suzanne worked as a dancer. In 1989, she and Floyd married in New Orleans under aliases — Clarence Hughes and Tonya Tadlock.

In April 1990, Suzanne was found unconscious on the side of a highway outside Oklahoma City, groceries scattered around her. Though first believed to be a hit-and-run, she was found with severe bruising and a large hematoma. She died the following day, per FBI documentation.

Suzanne’s identity remained unknown and Michael was placed in foster care. In 1994, Floyd forced his way into Michael’s Oklahoma school at gunpoint, abducted the child, and vanished, according to the FBI’s cold case summary.

Floyd was arrested in Kentucky two months later — but Michael was gone. According to the FBI, Floyd refused to say what happened to the boy and was later convicted of a federal kidnapping charge.

During that investigation, authorities found photos taped to the gas tank of Floyd’s truck showing a young woman who appeared to be bound and beaten. That woman was later identified as Cheryl Ann Commenso, who had worked at Mons Venus club in Tampa along with Suzanne — her remains had been discovered near a freeway on-ramp in Tampa, Fla.

Floyd was charged with her 1989 murder, convicted and sentenced to death in 2002, per the Tampa Bay Times.

According to the FBI, Floyd confessed to killing Michael in 2014, admitting he shot the 6-year-old twice in the back of the head on the same day he abducted him.

“Michael was being a typical 6-year-old. He was out of control, and that pushed Floyd over the edge,” Special Agent Scott Lobb, who elicited the confession in an interview recalled, per the FBI cold case file. “Floyd felt the pressure and he just ran out of patience.”

Lobb remembered the confession vividly: “He turned and looked at me and said, ‘I shot him twice in the back of the head to make it real quick,'” he said.

Although Floyd told authorities that he’d buried the boy’s body near an interstate exit close to the Texas state line, per the Tampa Bay Times, his body was never found.

That same year, investigators determined through DNA testing that “Tonya Hughes” — Suzanne’s alias at the time of her death — was actually Suzanne Marie Sevakis, the long-missing daughter of the woman Floyd had briefly married in the 1970s.

“We were able to find her birth parents and give them some closure about their daughter,” Lobb said.

However, the specifics of Suzanne’s death remain a mystery, as Floyd has never been charged in connection with her death. “That’s the one thing Floyd won’t talk about,” Lobb said.

After years of court delays due to questions about his mental competency, Floyd died of natural causes in 2023 at age 79, per the Florida Department of Corrections.

“A better thing couldn’t happen to a worse person,” Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bruce Bartlett, who prosecuted Floyd, told the Tampa Bay Times.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

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