Netflix and true crime have a very tight-knit relationship, with the streamer being known for housing some of the most prolific and haunting cases the world has ever seen.
Among them, is Girl In The Picture, a new documentary that has been on everyone’s lips from the minute it dropped. It starts with a young woman who has been found dead at the side of the road after being hit by a car.
As police investigate her death, they realise that it may not actually have been caused by a hit-and-run, and that the woman isn’t who they thought she was.
The woman in question was Suzanne Marie Sevakis, who had been kidnapped at a young age and forced to endure unthinkable horror, all while the man responsible repeatedly changed her identity to avoid getting caught.
Below, everything you need to know about her story, including what happened to her son and her abuser.
Who was Suzanne Marie Sevakis?
Suzanna Marie Sevakis (also known as Sharon Marshall) was the daughter of Sandi Chipman, a woman who married a man named Franklin Delano Floyd in 1975.
Chipman had four children prior to marrying Floyd, with the newlywed couple raising them as a blended family. Not long after, Floyd kidnapped all four of Chipman’s children and later released all of them except one — Suzanne.
Over the years, Floyd cared for Suzanne and raised her as his own daughter, before changing her name to Sharon Marshall. Years later, Suzanne fell pregnant to her boyfriend and made the decision to run away from Floyd, per the Tampa Bay Times.
One day, her boyfriend discovered a note allegedly left by Floyd, stating that he had taken Suzanne back. After kidnapping her once again, Floyd forced Suzanne to marry him and changed her name yet again, this time to Tonya Hughes. He then assumed the alias of Clarence Hughes.
At the age of 20, Suzanne would be found dead, allegedly from a hit-and-run accident. Strangely, though, she had blunt-force trauma to the back of her head which was not consistent with car accident injuries.
However it wasn’t long before police suspected that there may have been foul play involved, with the documentary exploring the several theories posited at the time (namely, whether Floyd was involved).
Who is Michael Anthony Hughes?
Michael is the son of Suzanne and her boyfriend, who was just two-years-old at the time of her death.
As Michael was not related to Floyd, he was sent to live in a foster home, where he was adopted by Merle and Ernest Bean for four years, per Newsweek.
In September 1994, Michael was kidnapped from his elementary school by Floyd and seemingly vanished, never to be heard from again.
For years afterward, nobody knew what happened to Michael, but in 2014, Floyd admitted to killing the young boy in a fit of rage.
‘I shot him twice in the back of the head to make it real quick,'” Floyd’s statement to the FBI read.
What happened to Franklin Delano Floyd?
Along with the murder of Michael, in 2002 the Florida Supreme Court also found Floyd guilty of murdering Suzanne’s friend and coworker, Cheryl Ann Commesso.
Five years after Suzanne’s death, a mechanic found an envelope in a truck Floyd had recently bought which contained 97 photos of a severely beaten missing woman named Cheryl Ann Commesso. It also contained images of Suzanne being abused from the age of four to her teenage years.
These images incriminated him for Cheryl’s murder, and caused police to believe he had murdered Suzanne, but not evidence has yet tied him to her death.
Floyd is currently on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Florida. He is 79 years old.
To this day, he has never admitted to Sharon’s murder and has not been charged with a crime relating to her death.
