The first witness called to testify was Special Agent Joe Fitzpatrick, who spent the day relaying the events of September 12, 1994—the day Michael was kidnapped—and the subsequent FBI investigation and Floyd’s arrest on November 10.
By Friday, several other witnesses had testified, and court was nearing the end of the day when Fitzpatrick felt his pager vibrating. He jotted down the number, then walked out to the hallway and called Special Agent Tom Jordan of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Jordan said he had something Fitzpatrick should see, and it couldn’t wait.
Luther Masterson was in his Mission, Kansas, garage early that Friday afternoon preparing to install a wiring harness for a trailer on the white 1994 Ford pickup he’d purchased from the State Farm Insurance company. The car had been stolen, and the insurance company sold it to reclaim some of the money it lost on the payout.
Masterson owned an auto body shop and pulled himself underneath the rear end. He looked up and saw what looked like a package wrapped in masking tape sticking out from above the gas tank. Masterson reached up and grabbed the package, which had been taped to the tank, and slid out from under the truck.
In his hand was a manila envelope, worn and ripped into several pieces and wrapped in tape. Masterson’s first inclination was that it contained drugs. He turned it over to the other end, saw a slight opening, and looked inside. There were photographs. He decided to open the package and inside he found photos, dozens of them. His eyes opened wide with horror when he flipped through the pictures, and he immediately called the Mission police.
Officer Gary Hines arrived, confiscated the photos, and took down the vehicle identification number of the Ford truck.
When he returned to the police station, Hines ran a check on the car and verified that Masterson purchased the vehicle from State Farm. The car had been stolen out of Oklahoma City in September and later recovered in Dallas. It belonged to a James D. Davis of Midwest City, Oklahoma.
Hines called the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, who contacted Joe Fitzpatrick.
On Monday morning, day four of testimony had already begun, but Fitzpatrick remained at the FBI office, studying the photos.
There were ninety-seven pictures in all, most of them cropped pictures of young girls, from toddlers to teens. Many of the photos featured nude girls engaged in explicit sexual activity. Others were dressed in exotic clothing, posing provocatively.
Fitzpatrick studied each photo and was overcome with a deep sense of disgust and rage. There appeared to be four different sets of pictures. One set featured a boat, perhaps a twenty-two or twenty-four footer. The second set was of two girls, anywhere from ten to twelve years old, fully dressed but posing in clothing far too provocative for children to wear. The third group featured photos of what appeared to be one girl as she grew from toddler to teen. She was blond and had been photographed posing or performing in sexually explicit positions, often spreading her legs and exposing her vagina.
Fitzpatrick knew the girl was Sharon.
Fitzpatrick tried to remain stoic, but his heart sank, and he couldn’t stop from imagining the absolute horror Sharon experienced during her years with Franklin Delano Floyd.
The fourth set of photos was equally, if not more, disturbing. They were of a young woman, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties. She was nude, her hands bound behind her back. She was blindfolded and obviously beaten. Her lips were swollen and bloody, with cuts and blood around her nose, which was also swollen. It was difficult to tell if she was conscious. She had long, dark curly hair, full breasts, possibly with implants, and a tanned, shapely body.
The woman had been positioned lying on her back and stomach, her legs spread apart, her vagina and anus exposed. There appeared to be small burn marks around the anal area. Many of the photos were close-ups of her breast and pubic areas.
Fitzpatrick returned to the courthouse and informed Ed Kumiega and Mark Yancey about the new, disturbing discovery.
Following the day’s testimony the three men met at the U.S. Attorney’s office to view the pictures, and Kumiega and Yancey were stunned. It was clear that the older girl had been tortured, forced into degrading positions, and was apparently near death.
“It looks like a snuff photo,” said a disgusted Kumiega.
The photos of Sharon were devastating. They all had an idea that she had been abused living with Floyd, but the photos brought to life the real and unmitigated horror.
“This kid didn’t have a chance,” said Yancey. “He took her, abused her, then killed her, and killed her son. Absolutely horrible.”
Kumiega pulled out a photo of Sharon wearing a leopard-skin outfit and high heels. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.
“He’s dressing her up as a hooker,” said Kumiega. “He did that to her. He put her in those strip clubs when she got older. That wasn’t her choice. Jesus. That wasn’t her choice.”
It took a few minutes to recover from the initial shock revealed in the photos before the prosecutors and Fitzpatrick began discussing the legal ramifications of the find. Floyd clearly left the photos, his personal “trophy” case, underneath the truck after arriving in Dallas. That much was certain. All agreed that it was too late to file child-abuse charges, at least for this trial. It was also probably too late to introduce the photos during the trial.
It was clear that the young woman in the fourth set of photos, whoever she was, was probably dead, and Fitzpatrick returned to his office and sent out a nationwide alert hoping to find out her identity.
When the trial resumed the next morning the prosecution continued with its parade of witnesses: Gary Homan, Dr. William Schmid, and the other psychiatrists who treated Floyd in prison; Emilio Ayala, the Dallas police officer who found the stolen car; Gregory Panther, the Louisville man who worked with Floyd on the paint crew; James Davis; the school principal; and Merle Bean, who tearfully recounted Michael’s profound turnaround under her care, all testified.
Greg Higgs was flown in from his home in Oregon and recounted his relationship with the girl he knew as Sharon. Prior to his testimony he met Jennifer Fisher Tanner in the victims’ witness room provided by the U.S. Attorney’s office. Inside the room were a support staff, couch, television, and food. Jennifer had flown in again from San Diego the night before. She was whisked downtown and asked to review several of the photos found in the Ford truck.
The prosecutors knew it would be painful and covered Sharon’s genital area. Jennifer broke down when she saw the first photo. It was Sharon, dressed in the same sexy clothing Jennifer had seen in her dresser drawers so many years earlier. The second photo was of Sharon wearing the tiger-stripe suit Jennifer wore that night Floyd took them to the dance club.
The prosecutors showed Jennifer two more photos, both of Sharon when she was a child. Again, they covered her genital area. Jennifer was in agony.
The next day she met Greg Higgs. It was their first meeting, and Jennifer could see why Sharon was attracted to him. He was handsome and clean-cut. They talked and expressed the same hurt, shock, and general disbelief. Greg was also deeply wounded over the loss of Michael.
“I never knew that I had a son. And now that I do know, he’s gone,” said Higgs. “If they ever find Michael I’m fighting for custody, and Jennifer, I want you to be his god-mother, OK?”
Jennifer began to cry. She hugged Greg, thanked him for the thought, and then heard her name called.
It was time to go across the street and testify.
A court officer led Jennifer to the door leading into the courtroom. She was determined to bring the essence of Sharon into the court and wanted the judge and attorneys and all in attendance to see the real Sharon, to hear her voice, to hear the truth. Jennifer wanted to honor her friend, but she was nervous and needed help. So she closed her eyes and prayed for divine assistance.
The door opened and she confidently walked down the center aisle, her head held up high. She could see Floyd’s back up ahead t
o the left. He was sitting at the defense table. He turned around, recognized her immediately, and appeared agitated. She walked past Floyd, not bothering to look at him, then walked to the witness stand, said the oath, and sat down. Now she was face-to-face with Floyd, and could see him clearly. It had been nine years, and he looked pretty much the same, just older, grayer, and balder.
Floyd returned the icy stare.
Kumiega and Yancey had taken turns interviewing witnesses, and it was Yancey who would lead Jennifer through her relationship with Sharon and Floyd, their phone calls, their letters, Sharon’s dreams and aspirations. Each time Jennifer mentioned Sharon by name, she turned her stare toward Floyd.
Following a brief recess, Susan Otto cross-examined Jennifer, questioned her friendship with Sharon, and suggested that Jennifer held a negative opinion of Floyd based on information given her by the FBI.
“That’s absolutely incorrect,” said Jennifer. “I always had a very negative connotation about him. My parents absolutely could not stand him.”
“Well, now, wait a minute. Your parents hired him to work for them,” said Otto.
“No! We were terrified of him. He had a very violent temper,” said Jennifer.
Otto stopped, turned to the judge, and said she had no further questions.
The judge excused Jennifer, who walked out of the witness stand and by Floyd. He looked enraged, his face red, his fists clenched.
She strode out of the courtroom feeling great satisfaction, confident that she had told the world about her friend Sharon, and knowing that her testimony was yet another nail in the government’s case.
The hammer was Joe Fitzpatrick.
Following his testimony the first day of the trial, Fitzpatrick was called to the witness stand two more times as Kumiega and Yancey presented their case in chronological order.
It was Fitzpatrick’s third and final time on the witness stand when he would be cross-examined by Floyd.
The only other time the two men had met face-to-face was in Louisville, and now Floyd believed he had the upper hand, given that he would be the one asking the questions. It was the moment Floyd had waited for, and he wanted to prove that Fitzpatrick was prejudiced and, despite his standing within the FBI, would resort to any means to help convict him.
But Floyd’s examination was off-the-wall, his arguments more or less nonsensical, drawing even more damning evidence from Fitzpatrick concerning Floyd’s years in Oklahoma City using the name Trenton Davis and allegations that he abused Sharon, then known as Suzanne.
“If you found evidence of abuse, tell the court what it is, and where you got it,” said Floyd.
“The baby-sitter that took care of Suzanne Davis was highly suspicious that the child had been abused, that’s why you left Oklahoma City,” said Fitzpatrick.
Floyd tried to regroup, changing the subject to his travels throughout the country with Sharon, but only fumbled more on his words, giving Fitzpatrick the opportunity to toy with him.
For every question Floyd asked, Fitzpatrick returned either pointed answers or incredulous reactions, not understanding Floyd’s incoherent line of questioning. Floyd looked and sounded foolish, and with each response from Fitzpatrick, he was becoming increasingly frustrated.
“Your Honor, the witness is not answering the question!” he’d bark.
Floyd prefaced impossible questions about his life with “Are you aware . . .” and incurred the wrath of Judge Alley, who repeatedly warned him not to assert a fact in the guise of a question.
At one point, Floyd painted himself as an “upstanding citizen” who was given a small child to care for, and asked Fitzpatrick what he thought of that.
“Mr. Floyd, an upstanding citizen in the community and you are not the same thing,” said Fitzpatrick.
The rambling cross-examination continued through the morning, only to be mercifully stopped by Judge Alley, who’d had enough. He called for a lunch break, and instructed Floyd to allow Susan Otto to continue the cross-examination when court reconvened after lunch.
When they returned, Fitzpatrick was questioned by Otto and Floyd sat slumped in his seat, emotionally and physically drained from the verbal beating he’d suffered at the hands of Fitzpatrick.
The trial was all but over, the time for Floyd’s guilt to be declared separated only by the testimony of defense witnesses, one of whom unexpectedly provided the prosecution and investigators with clues to Floyd’s whereabouts the week after he kidnapped Michael.
Susan Otto called Shashi Narottam, the owner of the Fulton Inn Motel in Atlanta, Georgia. Each day some thirty to forty people checked into the motel, which was next door to the Greyhound bus depot, and Narottam didn’t think twice about renting a room, so long as the customer had cash in hand. Identification wasn’t even a consideration if the person looked reasonably respectable and was ready to pay $27.62 per night, which included tax, for a clean room and bed. Checkout was the next day at 11 A.M.
Narottam testified that Floyd arrived in Atlanta on Tuesday, September 13, and rented a room under the name “Bill Blankenship.” Floyd, a.k.a. Blankenship, said little other than he was staying in Atlanta for a while. He gave his address as 2640 46 Street, Phoenix, Arizona, and was handed the keys to room number 44, for which he paid eight days in advance. Floyd stayed at the Fulton Inn until September 21, when he checked himself into Grady Memorial Hospital. Narottam testified that during that week he never saw Floyd with a boy, supporting the defense claim that Michael was not in Atlanta with Floyd.
Kumiega, Yancey, and Fitzpatrick didn’t believe that Narottam’s testimony proved anything other than that Floyd was smart enough to rent the room by himself, without being seen with Michael. Dorothy Leonard’s chilling story about the bathtub drowning now made even more sense, and the timeline was complete.
They all believed that Floyd arrived in Atlanta, with Michael, and rented the room at the Fulton Inn. A week later Michael was dead, and Floyd carjacked the Dodge Shadow, disposed of Michael’s body, then checked himself into the hospital for nine days before boarding a bus for Louisville on September 30.
Narottam’s testimony was, quite simply, a gift for the prosecution.
Testimony ended on Friday, April 7. Final arguments began on Monday morning, April 10, and Ed Kumiega was thankful he was speaking directly to Judge Alley and not a jury, which allowed him to shorten the time needed to deliver his closing.
Kumiega delivered a compassionate plea, addressing the legal issue of parental rights, maintaining that Floyd was never a parent to Michael Hughes and never satisfied the section 1201 requirement.
He then talked about Floyd’s prior actions and the effect they had on others.
“The evidence also shows at this trial that the defendant has wreaked havoc on three generations of Michael Anthony Hughes’s kin. Michael is missing, Michael’s mother had to live since nineteen-seventy-five under many aliases, and we do not know the pain and suffering of Sharon Marshall’s mother in this case. The statement that the defendant gave to the FBI is that she was an unwanted baby and he took the baby. That’s all we know. That’s all that the government, after many hours of—hundreds of hours, man-hours—can establish, is that Michael Anthony Hughes is the son of Sharon Marshall.”
Susan Otto’s closing argument centered on the legal definition of a parent, claiming that Floyd raised Michael during the first two years of his life, he fulfilled the definition of a parent in section 1201. She also argued that Michael “consumed” Floyd’s waking hours, and that Floyd’s love for Michael led Floyd to subject himself to the Oklahoma Juvenile Court system, with little success.
“I respectfully submit that no one but a parent could have persisted,” said Otto. “Mr. Floyd has lived a very remarkable life, remarkable in the sense that he has suffered great things and many things at the hands of adults when he was a child, at the hands of his peers when he was in prison. And as a result of this Mr. Floyd is very reluctant to trust institutions, to trust systems.”
Otto concluded by saying that Floyd wished to speak, and he rose slowly, his legs shackled. Floyd had decided against taking the stand, and instead used his closing argument to state his case, reviewing the abuse he suffered as a child, then arguing that he was the sole parent of Michael Hughes, claiming that “blood is not the only ingredient to the love and cherishment of a child.
“I took my son because it was my right to live and care for him, unimpeded by an intervention by DHS unsupported by the law. It was not a stranger who held this beautiful child in his arms at birth and felt the warmth and glow of his love for me, and were bonded in that moment for life. It was not a stranger who nursed and cleaned and fed him while his mother worked at night. It was not a stranger who contracted his diseases and sicknesses while he cared for this fevered child and worried if he would die or not. It was not a stranger who walked with him in the park, pulling his wagon, and taking him to the fair and Easter egg hunts, taking him to the mall where he liked to shop until he dropped. Other children he played with, and he had deep feelings with them, a wonderful little boy. He loves Jesus and he sings it so sweet on the visit tape that I recorded.”
Floyd’s emotional speech was nauseating to the prosecution, but he had built momentum, and the words flowed like a Sunday sermon.
“It was not a stranger who paid child support and set up a trust fund for him, and spent four years fighting the court for his return. Oh, God, don’t let these people stand between me and the love of my son and don’t let them destroy the bond between us, and let my son come home. This is not a case of a stranger taking a child, it’s the act of a loving father who can’t stand to see the heartbreak of his child any longer.”
Judge Alley called for an afternoon recess until 4 P.M., and when court resumed, justice was handed down as surely and swiftly as Ed Kumiega and Mark Yancey expected.
Franklin Delano Floyd was guilty of all charges.
Floyd stood still, showing little emotion, expecting the worst. Judge Alley read through his verdict, dismissing any argument that Floyd was Michael’s parent. Alley believed that since Floyd was not a biological, adoptive, or step-parent, and that his marriage to Sharon was a “sham,” Floyd simply had no right to claim himself a parent.
A Beautiful Child Page 15