Plans? I’m moving back west in a couple of weeks. Can’t stand the humidity. I’m not sure exactly where yet, but I promise to tell you when I get there.
Questions. Family? Writing me? School and graduation? College? Summer plans? Love life? Work? Car? Etc.
I’m going to go now. I’ve been writing this letter three days now. I’ll get free time to write more later.
Love ya, Sharon
Jennifer was relieved to see that that Sharon seemed all right, much better than when she received that strange phone call from South Carolina.
There would only be two more contacts with Sharon, both on the phone. One would come in the fall. Sharon was still in Florida, and she had some news. She had a six-month-old son, whom she had named Michael.
“Sharon! Why didn’t you tell me before?” said Jennifer.
“I don’t know. Maybe I was embarrassed. Imagine me, pregnant again? But I love this boy. I was worried that Daddy wouldn’t let me keep him. Michael cries a lot and is kind of whiny. Daddy gets frustrated with him when I’m away. He’s usually crying when I come home so I usually just pick him up and take him into another room to calm him down. But things are OK,” said Sharon.
She said she was still waitressing at some club, making decent money. Life, on the whole, was good.
“Is that what you want, cocktailing?” said Jennifer.
“Well, the outfits are kind of skimpy, but it’s not that bad,” said Sharon.
Jennifer couldn’t help but notice the irony; her brilliant friend with a promising future was now the mother of an infant son and waitressing tables while Jennifer had straightened her life out and was going to college. It was, thought Jennifer, so sad.
Even sadder was that Jennifer knew she wasn’t talking to the Sharon of old. Something was missing. Sharon’s voice and tone were matter-of-fact, unemotional. Jennifer had first heard it a year earlier during that strange call from South Carolina. The Sharon of old was always so upbeat and bursting with energy.
Now she sounded as if she had given up.
Their last contact was in the form of another phone call several months later, and Jennifer remembered her surprise when Sharon talked about breast implants.
“Daddy always thought I should look a little bigger,” she said.
The two friends talked for another ten minutes. Sharon was pleased to hear that Jennifer was doing well in college, but there was a tinge of sadness to her voice. Jennifer knew that Sharon should have been in school, finishing up her degree at Georgia Tech, going to football games and frat parties, and planning what everyone thought would be a promising future.
“Jenny, I’ve got to go,” said Sharon. “I love you.”
It was the last time Jennifer ever heard from Sharon.
Jennifer spent years searching for her friend. Countless Internet searches, visits to the local library, calls to operator information in Arizona, Georgia, and Florida, states she knew where Sharon had lived, and even a letter to Sharon’s last known address, which was in Tampa, proved fruitless.
Jennifer had desperately wanted Sharon to attend her graduation ceremonies from the University of Georgia, which she had transferred to in 1990. And she saw Sharon as the perfect choice to serve as her maid of honor at her wedding in 1992 to Zachary Tanner, a Navy man who was stationed in San Diego.
But Sharon was gone.
Jennifer remained in her kitchen for thirty minutes, standing in the same spot and staring at the FBI hotline number before reaching over, picking up the phone, and dialing.
“Hi, there was a story in Atlanta about a little boy that was missing. His mother was my best friend.”
CHAPTER 17
The reports that arrived from the Louisville and Atlanta FBI field offices were incomplete, and Joe Fitzpatrick was frustrated. Louisville agents were able to account for all of Floyd’s time in Kentucky after his arrival on September 30. But the Atlanta file was thin, with few clues—aside from the truck he left in Dallas—as to Floyd’s whereabouts from September 12 to September 21, 1994.
Thanks to the efforts of the Louisville field office back-tracking Floyd’s activities, Fitzpatrick knew that Floyd was in Atlanta on September 21, when he checked himself into Grady Memorial Hospital for psychiatric observation. Floyd spent eight days at Grady, where he was treated for some undefined but deeply troubling event in his life. Floyd explained that his wife and son had died, and the grief was unbearable. But he gave no details, and doctors were suspicious. He remained at the hospital until September 29, when he checked himself out and took a cab to the Travelers Aid office.
Travelers Aid was a United Way-sponsored agency that helped single individuals short on money return to their homes from Atlanta. They provided meal tickets to a local Burger King and discount Greyhound bus tickets. Caseworker Wilber Purvis received a call that morning from the Louisville Travelers Aid office that a Warren Marshall, a patient at Grady Memorial Hospital, was stranded in Atlanta and needed assistance returning home.
Floyd, a.k.a. Marshall, had called the Walnut Street Baptist Church, where he was a member when he lived in Louisville from 1979 to 1981. The church called Travelers Aid, and Floyd arrived at the Atlanta office at 11 A.M. He told Purvis he had been in Atlanta for two years searching for his daughter, who had run away from home. Unable to locate her, Floyd said, he became depressed and checked himself into the psychiatric ward at Grady. Floyd was calm, but spoke only when spoken to. Purvis tried to get more information on his daughter, and also asked about any relatives. Floyd said he didn’t have any.
Purvis gave Floyd a voucher to purchase the bus ticket, worth $36.75, and a $3.50 voucher for Burger King, which was inside the bus terminal. Floyd, maintaining his Warren Marshall identity, arrived in Louisville the next day.
Agents from the Louisville field office backtracked the bus ticket found in Floyd’s duffel bag to the Travelers Aid office in Atlanta, then to Grady Memorial. All who came in contact with Floyd said he traveled alone. Fitzpatrick believed that Michael made it to Atlanta, but since investigators were unable to account for Floyd’s activities the week before he checked into the hospital, he was sure that whatever happed to Michael occurred during that “lost” week. The hospital stay was a chance for Floyd to “decompress” following Michael’s death.
He arrived in Louisville on September 30 and stayed two nights at the St. Vincent de Paul men’s homeless shelter before renting an apartment at the Victorian house, an old apartment complex.
Within days after his arrival he secured a job as a painter with a small contracting company called Art Works. Admired for his painting prowess, Floyd was assigned finishing work. But his persona was deemed peculiar, if not creepy. During the introduction to his foreman, William Leonard, Floyd said, “My name is Warren and my wife is a whore in Las Vegas.”
A week later, while working in a house attic, Floyd told another worker, Greg Panther, that he had kidnapped a five-year-old boy in Atlanta and that his wife was a prostitute. A shaken Panther relayed the story to Leonard.
Tenants at the Victorian house originally tried to help Floyd, giving him clothing and food. But they were soon struck by his behavior.
Terry Evans, a neighbor who lived below Floyd, wondered if he ever slept. The neighbor could hear him walking in his apartment all hours of the night. Floyd never spoke about a lost son, but complained to Evans that he had a daughter who was a prostitute. Tenants were also curious when Floyd ordered a Florida driver’s license, borrowing money and a telephone to make the call, insisting he didn’t want a Kentucky license.
Floyd eventually stopped talking to Evans after he refused Floyd’s request to watch a movie on his TV.
Floyd wanted to watch The Fugitive.
Floyd was eventually let go from the painting crew and found another job selling used cars at JD Byrider Sales.
Fitzpatrick went back to the Atlanta report and zeroed in on September 20. It was the day before he checked himself into Grady Memorial. A woman placed a
“car for sale” ad in the classified section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and received a call from a man who wanted to see the car. The man asked the woman if she could drive to meet him, and she agreed. The man got into the car, drove it for a few minutes, and then attacked the woman. She escaped, but the man drove off with the car, which was reported stolen. The assailant matched the description of Franklin Floyd.
Fitzpatrick knew they had to find that car, a responsibility that rested with the Atlanta field office and Special Agent William Bray. A twenty-year veteran of the FBI, his last five years in the Atlanta office, Bray was the Atlanta agent assigned to the Franklin Floyd case. Following Floyd’s arrest, Bray reached out to Rebecca “Becky” Barr.
Barr’s phone number was found inside Floyd’s address book, and it was discovered later that they had known each other since their days at the children’s home. Barr claimed that she had no previous contact with Floyd, which was met with disbelief by Bray, who asked Barr to cooperate to help find Michael.
Floyd was in Jeffersonville, Indiana, awaiting a transfer to Oklahoma City and continuing to stifle investigators, offering no information on Michael’s whereabouts.
Barr agreed to cooperate with the FBI, making contact with Floyd over the phone to see if he’d tell her what happened to Michael and where investigators would find his remains.
“How do I make contact?” said Barr, concerned that Floyd wouldn’t tell her anything if he found out she was sharing information with the FBI.
It was decided that Barr would call the prison and leave a message for Floyd to call her, which he did. The call came in collect, and Floyd used Barr as a sounding board. Did she know anything? Had she been contacted by the FBI? What was she telling them?
Barr said not to worry, that she wouldn’t say or do anything to hurt her old friend. Floyd called Barr often, and she incurred a $364 phone bill, which the FBI agreed to pay to Barr, in cash.
Following subsequent conversations with Floyd, Barr agreed that Michael was probably dead and suggested possible burial sites, including a cemetery in Poterdale, Georgia, where Floyd’s father was buried. She also suggested several streams and creeks, which were searched but provided no clues.
After several weeks the Rebecca Barr exercise was going nowhere, and the information coming from Floyd was confusing and repetitive. Bray told Barr he’d no longer reimburse her calls and started thinking of another way to get to Floyd. He didn’t have to think long.
Floyd decided to call Bray from jail, and suggested that the FBI insert newspaper ads, specifically written by Floyd, which would serve to inform the “people” who had Michael to give him up. Floyd mailed his instructions to Bray, who in turn consulted with Joe Fitzpatrick in Oklahoma City. They decided to turn over the instructions to Floyd’s newly appointed public defender, Susan Otto, which infuriated Floyd, who quickly called Becky Barr screaming that the FBI would find Michael dead.
“They’re going to pull him out of a creek,” said Floyd.
The offices of the United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma were on the sixth floor of the Oklahoma Tower, a sparkling building in downtown Oklahoma City, just blocks away from the federal court building and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark Yancey and Edward Kumiega were assigned the task of prosecuting Franklin Delano Floyd for kidnapping, possession of a firearm, and several other offenses relating to the abduction of Michael Hughes.
Both Yancey and Kumiega were highly skilled and competent attorneys. Yancey, thirty-five, joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in 1990 and had developed a solid reputation as a capable prosecutor. Originally from Tampa, Florida, Yancey was as clean-cut as they come—he looked like an evening television newscaster. Of medium size, he was handsome and well groomed, his white shirts neatly pressed and starched, his dark hair parted on the side and perfectly combed. His face appeared to be polished, his skin shining. A 1982 graduate of Florida State University, Yancey went straight to law school, studying at Samford Law in Alabama and graduating in 1986. His career took a decidedly unexpected detour when he was recruited by the FBI. His first and only assignment upon his graduation from the FBI academy was working with the U.S. Attorney’s office. After four years he was offered a position as a government prosecutor in Oklahoma City.
Yancey had been on top of the Michael Hughes kidnapping from day one, facilitating the initial arrest warrant on a firearm charge, and later adding the federal kidnapping charge after the stolen truck was recovered in Dallas. Yancey spoke in direct, forceful tones, and never let his guard down.
By contrast Ed Kumiega, thirty-eight, was far more low-key, a straight shooter from Jersey City, New Jersey, who found his way to Oklahoma by studying law at the University of Tulsa. After graduating in 1980, Kumiega had a choice between returning back east or taking a job as an assistant DA with the Washita County, Oklahoma, district attorney’s office.
He took the Washita job, where his legal skills quickly earned him a promotion to first assistant DA. By March 1990, he was working for the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Kumiega had been driving along I-40 back in September when he heard the news on the radio about the Michael Hughes’s kidnapping. He though it was sad and tragic, but figured it would be a state case.
He learned later that night he was wrong.
Kumiega walked with a distinct limp, which he carried from birth, wore wrinkled shirts, and had an office that looked more like a repository for loose papers. Like Yancey, Kumiega had a keen legal mind. It was decided early on that Kumiega, with his lengthier experience, would be the lead prosecutor for the government on a case that wasn’t as cut and dried as it appeared to be.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that Floyd kidnapped Michael at gunpoint, there was a very real legal issue here, one that caused great concern for the young prosecutors: Was Floyd within his legal and parental rights as Michael’s father to take him from the Indian Meridian Elementary School? If so, he would be exempt from federal kidnapping charges, which carried up to a life sentence. While the state courts said Floyd was not Michael’s father, basing their opinion on the fact that Floyd gave up custody of Michael to DHS and was not the biological father, Kumiega and Yancey weren’t so sure the federal court would agree.
Floyd had previously argued that while he was not Michael’s biological father, he could be loosely defined as a parent because he acted as Michael’s male parenting figure for two years prior to the death of Michael’s mother.
The question consuming Kumiega and Yancey was, does the word parent include a person who is not biologically related? Congress never defined the word parent in its statute, 18 USC section 1201, the federal criminal code involving kidnapping. If the statutory exemption was limited to biological parents, Floyd could not prevail. But according to various interpretations of the word parent, including the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, a parent was defined as a person who has borne a child, whether a father or mother, or a person who “holds the position or exercises the functions of a parent: a protector, a guardian.”
Floyd claimed the latter. He had presented himself as Michael’s father for two years and, in concept, cared for and supported him. Kumiega and Yancey found themselves in a legal quandary, knowing they’d have to answer for the court the definition of a parent.
Floyd had been charged with kidnapping, interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, and possession of a firearm during a kidnapping and carjacking. The kidnapping charge was by far the most serious, but if Floyd could successfully argue to the federal court that he was Michael’s father, the prosecutors realized that the kidnapping charge could be dismissed. Though not fatal to the government’s case—the firearm charge carried a twenty-year term—getting Floyd on kidnapping would put him away for good.
It was cutting-edge law, and the young lawyers were unsure—and worried—how this would play out.
The first order of business for Kumiega and Yancey
was the actual indictment and presentment of evidence before a federal grand jury. Compared to state courts, the federal court system moved at warp speed, and the indictment and trial could happen within six months. The case of the United States of America versus Franklin Delano Floyd was considered a “Rocket Docket,” and Kumiega and Yancey knew they had their work cut out for them and cleared their calendars.
This was a full government investigation, and they were given the necessary resources to successfully prosecute the case. In addition to obtaining all the FBI files and Floyd’s prison records, they scheduled interviews with everyone and anyone connected to the case, with full power and authority to fly anyone to Oklahoma City.
They subpoenaed David Dial and forced him to travel from his home in Georgia to testify before the grand jury. Dial had just been released from prison on yet another drug charge, and his large frame and unsettling demeanor spooked everyone. Still, his testimony convinced all that Floyd was dangerous.
Kumiega and Yancey worked seven days a week, often late into the evening, even stopping for a beer or two at a local pub late at night to continue their strategy sessions. They’d return home, get little sleep, then pick up again early the next morning.
They developed a strong and decided opinion of Franklin Floyd, the FBI files providing complete information about his childhood, arrest, and prison record, and fairly accurate estimates of his whereabouts during the fugitive years from 1975 through 1989.
They surmised that Michael was dead, but had no idea as to his whereabouts. They wanted to find his remains and determine the cause of death, but that proved extremely difficult. Interviews with witnesses from Kentucky and Georgia suggested several scenarios. One witness, a prisoner who befriended Floyd at the Oklahoma County jail, claimed Floyd admitted throwing Michael off a bridge. Floyd even added that he could hear “the little bastard’s” screams as he fell to the river below, which he hit with a sickening thud.
A Beautiful Child Page 13