Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Shapeshifting Fugitive: Franklin Delano Floyd

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

A missing woman in Florida leads police to a fugitive who’s been on the run for 17 years. But that’s just the beginning. Franklin Delano Floyd not only becomes a suspect in that case, but he’s then tied to several unsolved murders, disappearances, and kidnappings dating back to the 1970s. For police, it will take decades to fully uncover the crimes of Franklin Delano Floyd. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's 1975, and Sandra Brandenburg just got out of jail. It was a short sentence, 30 days for writing a bad check. Now, as she turns the knob of her front door, she's smiling. She can't wait to see her husband, Brandon, and her three young daughters. But when she steps inside, the house is empty. Her family is gone. Sandra's confusion quickly turns into panic. She calls around, knocks on doors, and eventually finds two of her daughters living in a church.

Apparently, her husband gave up the girls without her knowledge or consent. But Sandra has no idea where Brandon or her other child, five-year-old Suzanne, is now. She'll spend the next 40 years looking for Suzanne, and wondering what kind of man her husband really was. Welcome to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. Every Monday we bring you the true crime stories that stand out. I'm Janice Morgan. We'd love to hear from you. Follow us on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast

and share your thoughts on this week's episode. Or if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and leave a comment. This episode includes discussions of violence, kidnapping, murder, and sexual abuse of children. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

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This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. It's January 1989. Tampa, Florida is decked with old Christmas lights, but the neon sign of the Mon's Venus strip club

shines brightest of all. It's one of Tampa's most lavish clubs, professional athletes and musicians or regular clientele. Inside, two dancers, Cheryl Comeso and Sharon Marshall get ready for their shifts. They only recently met.

Cheryl is new to the club, but they've become fast friends. When she's not dancing, Sharon's taking care of her nine-month-old son, Michael. She's a single mom and lives with her father Warren Marshall. She recently started dating a man named Carrie, and Carrie quickly begins to notice something strange about his girlfriend and her father. Warren's in his mid-40s. A lot of people say he's creepy. He tends to hang around the club while his daughter is working and never lets her

out of his sight. He makes inappropriate sexual comments to his daughter and other dancers. When Carrie spends time with the family, he notices that Sharon is nervous around Warren, like she's scared of him. Still, Cheryl takes a liking to Warren. He claims to have connections in the pornography industry in Los Angeles, and Cheryl thinks he could help her break into the business. Over the next few months, she grows closer to Sharon, meaning she's also spending more time with Warren.

Things are going well. At one point, Warren even does a topless photo shoot of Cheryl, promising he'll send her pictures along to his contacts in Hollywood. But then, it all falls apart. heart. One night, Cheryl lets Warren take her out on his boat on nearby Lake Okeechobee. While they're on the water, Warren starts making sexual advances. Cheryl turns him down and Warren explodes. He tries to physically attack her. Cheryl is so terrified she jumps overboard. She swims to shore and has to hitchhike all the way home. It's traumatic and also heartbreaking. She'd hoped Warren would help her

break into the pornography business, but he was just taking advantage. of her. Cheryl's disappointment soon gives way to rage. She wants revenge. She knows Warren's daughter, Sharon Marshall, doesn't report all the money she makes at work. A lot of it is cash tips, so it's easy and pretty common to try to avoid paying one's fair share of taxes. In Sharon's case, it allows her to receive welfare checks to pat out her income. Cheryl knows that Sharon and Warren depend on that extra money, and she's boiling with anger at Warren, so she decides to hurt him. She calls social services and tells authorities Sharon's been shirking the system. Her plan works.

Pretty soon, Sharon's welfare checks are suspended. Warren is furious. One day in March, 1989, he calls one of Cheryl's friends. He says he knows Cheryl's the one who turned them in. She's going to have to answer for it. It's not just about the welfare money. Sharon and her baby son Michael were on Medicaid, and now they've lost their coverage. Fair or not, by ratting them out,

Cheryl's put the family in a serious financial bind. Not long after this, some of Cheryl's co-workers see her and Warren arguing in the club's parking lot. Apparently while Sharon is inside working a shift, nobody can hear what they're saying, but they both look livid. Later, another dancer hears screaming from the parking lot. She goes outside and sees Warren trying to pull Cheryl into his car. Bouncers have to run over and intervene. Warren let Cheryl go and speeds away. One week later, Cheryl walks out of her father's home and never returns.

She's not the only one to disappear. In late May, shortly after Cheryl's car is found abandoned in a parking lot, Warren, Sharon, and Michael abruptly leave town. Their trailer burns down soon after they move away. The cause of the fire is ruled in arson. In June 1989, Cheryl's father reports his daughter missing. Her case goes cold. And it seems like that's the end of the story.

At least until 10 months later. It's just after midnight in April 1990. Delbert Ray Collins and two of his friends are driving down a dark service road just outside of Oklahoma City when they see a shoe in the middle of the street. Delbert slows. About 200 feet away, he sees a shape lying in the gutter, a woman convulsing. Groceries are scattered around her. a loaf of bread, two bottles of Dr. Pepper, a package of cookies,

and a broken antenna and windshield wiper. You might be thinking Cheryl Commesso has finally been found. However, this isn't her. We'll come back to her story, so keep her, Sharon, and Warren in mind. But for now, Delbert and his friends call paramedics who soon arrive at the scene. The woman is rushed to the nearest hospital. At first, doctors assume she's been involved in a hit and run. But the woman doesn't have any broken bones or external bleeding,

which is surprising if she was hit by a car. Instead, her most serious injury is a hematoma or an internal collection of blood on the back of her head. The woman is stabilized and kept in the hospital overnight. The next morning, a man arrives at the hospital. He introduces himself as Clarence Hughes and identifies the injured woman as his wife, Tanya. From the jump, something about Clarence seems strange.

range. He has almost no emotional reaction to seeing his wife in a coma. When the doctor explains that Tanya's brain is bruised and she's in serious condition, all Clarence does is request that no visitors be allowed in to see her. But when Clarence leaves the hospital, a visitor does show up, one of Tanya's co-workers, Karen. A doctor pulls Karen aside and tells her, this was no car accident. Karen feared as much. In fact, she thinks she knows who might have hurt Tanya. And the story she tells doctors might sound familiar. Karen met Tanya the previous fall at a Tulsa Strip club called Passions.

Tanya was bright and hardworking. She never drank or used drugs. Between sets, she would read books and crochet clothing for her son. Her son named Michael. But Karen and other dancers at the club couldn't help. but noticed Tanya's husband Clarence. He always drove her to and from work and hung around in the parking lot during her shifts.

As author Matt Burkeback writes in his book, A Beautiful Child, the staff all found him creepy and controlling, not to mention he was at least twice his wife's age. According to Karen, Tanya would sometimes show up to work covered in bruises. Some of the other dancers tried to convince her to leave her husband, but she was afraid.

She said she'd tried to run away twice, twice, but Clarence found her. He threatened to kill her if she tried again. That spring, right before Tanya was found on the road, she'd reportedly come up with a plan to leave Clarence. She was determined to get away from him. That, Karen thinks, is how Tanya ended up in a coma. She tried to escape her husband, and it all went wrong. The staff tells Karen she needs to take her suspicions to the police. But then, Clarence shows up. Karen leaves before he sees her. Clarence is in and out of the hospital for the next few days.

Tanya's condition appears to be improving. Then it takes a nosedive. She's put on life support. Clarence visits one evening, and when Karen comes the next day, Tanya has died. Clarence asks for his wife's organs to be donated and her body cremated. He doesn't even want a funeral. And when a medical examiner performs a child, an autopsy on Tanya's remains, he finds something very suspicious.

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Police in Oklahoma City start investigating in May of 1990. Their first person of interest is Tanya's husband, Clarence, so authorities go to the Hughes home in Tulsa. It looks like Clarence has already skipped town, but someone is still nearby, Tanya's son, Michael. Authorities learn that Clarence placed two-year-old Michael in temporary foster care on May 1st. He said he would return to pick up the boy,

who he claimed was his child, in a week. but Clarence never came back to get him. Michael's currently living with a foster family in Choctaw, about 20 miles outside of Oklahoma City, and he displays signs of serious emotional distress. He cries constantly. He won't sleep or talk. In fact, at two years old,

it seems Michael has never learned to speak. He's clearly traumatized. But just as police are learning about Michael, they got a call that changes everything. It's an insurance agent. He says a man by the name of Clarence Hughes just attempted to cash out two life insurance policies on his wife, Tanya.

They were worth a total of $80,000. But receiving payment required him to provide his social security number. When he did, the agent realized the number didn't match with the name Clarence Hughes. It belonged to someone else. It appears Clarence had been using a fake identity. His real name,

Franklin Delano Floyd The police were already suspicious of this so-called Clarence, knowing his real name only makes them more concerned because Franklin Delano Floyd has a rap sheet that would send a shiver down anyone's spine. He ran away from his rural Georgia home at 15 and started racking up criminal offenses. At 16, he was taken into custody for breaking into a Sears store.

Over the coming years, he was arrested for an attempted prison escape and for robbing a bank. His crimes became increasingly violent and predatory. At one point, he was convicted of child molestation. In January 1973, Floyd was out on parole when he tried to kidnap a woman from a gas station. She escaped and Floyd was arrested, but he posted bail and skipped town. He's been on the run using various pseudonyms ever since.

That's 17 years as a fugitive. now police suspect him of Tanya Hughes's murder and they're determined to track him down. It takes six weeks, but authorities eventually find Floyd living in a trailer in Augusta, Georgia. They arrest him on a fugitive warrant and put him back in prison for the 1973 attempted kidnapping. However, he's not charged with the murder of his wife.

The Oklahoma City police keep investigating, but they can't find any concrete evidence linking Floyd to the crime. They do figure out that Tanya Hughes wasn't his wife's real name. She was also using a pseudonym. Tanya Hughes is none other than Sharon Marshall. However, at this point, authorities have no idea about her and Floyd's, aka Warren's, life in Florida. They don't know anything about Floyd's fights with Cheryl Commesso, the woman who reported Sharon to social services, then disappeared.

And Floyd certainly isn't going to tell them. He's also not forthcoming with information about Michael. He insists he's the boy's biological father, but given his history, authorities don't trust him. They tell Floyd the only way he'll ever regain custody of Michael is by submitting to a paternity test and proving he's Michael's dad. Floyd refuses the test for months until a court order forces him to comply. As police suspected, Michael is not Floyd's biological son,

which means all Floyd's parental rights are, immediately terminated. And since Floyd won't say a word about who actually fathered the boy, Michael remains in foster care. But Michael flourishes with his new foster family. He starts talking, calling his foster parents, mama, and daddy. The only remnants of his past life are his nightmares, the ones where he's locked in a dark room, crying out for his mother. But now, he's in a safe place. Over the next couple years, he grows into a happy, well-adjusted kid. Then, in March of 1993, after serving 33 months in prison, Floyd is released on parole. And he begins his search for Michael.

It's Monday, September 12, 1994, just after 9 a.m. Franklin Delano Floyd walks into Indian Meridian Elementary School in Choctaw, Oklahoma. He asks for a meeting with the principal, James Davis. When Floyd sits down across from Davis, he says, I've been grieving for four years and I'm ready to die. I want you to help me get my son. Then he reaches into his pocket and shows the handle of a gun. Principal Davis knows his life is on the line,

but even more importantly, so are the lives of his 500 students. He tries to stay calm. All he can do is follow Floyd's orders. Davis leads Floyd to Michael's first grade classroom. The principal outside. asks the six-year-old to come to his office. When Michael steps into the hall, he realizes something's wrong. Even though he hasn't seen Franklin Delano Floyd in years, he remembers him,

and he's terrified of him. Floyd forces them both out into the parking lot. He asks where Davis's car is. The principal points to a white Ford pickup truck. Floyd tells him to get in. Floyd settles into the passenger seat. Michael sits in the center. Principal Davis drives until Floyd directs him to stop in a nearby field.

While Michael stays in the truck with the radio on, Floyd walks Davis into the woods. Floyd handcuffs him to a tree and duct tapes his mouth closed. But then, Floyd walks away. A few moments later, Davis hears his truck start up and drive off. He screams for help until he's rescued over four hours later. He tells the police what happened, and local authorities call the FBI for help. Special agent Joe Fitzpatrick reads everything they have on Franklin Delano Floyd. His arrest records, his wife's death, his custody battle for Michael. Now add kidnapping

principal Davis with a gun, abducting Michael straight out of class and making off with a stolen vehicle to that list. Authorities have to find this man. Fitzpatrick sends agents to interview anyone who might know Floyd. They search his room at the halfway house he's been living in since his parole. They find Floyd has used a number of different identities since his 1973 parole. An agent Fitzpatrick finally learns what you already know. Floyd and the woman they knew as Tanya Hughes had previously gone by the pseudonyms Warren and Sharon Marshall. But for Fitzpatrick, this only raises more questions. He doesn't know Tanya, aka Sharon's real name.

He doesn't know her real connection to Floyd. First she was his daughter, then she was his wife. Is it possible that this twisted man really changed his daughter's name and then married her? Or is there something else going on? What's the truth and what's the lie? All Fitzpatrick can figure out is that Floyd dragged Tanya, aka Sharon, across the country for years. They moved from Oklahoma City to Louisville, to Atlanta, to Phoenix, to Tampa.

By now, Floyd and Michael could be in any of those places or none of them. weeks pass with no breakthroughs. Then, on November 9th, Fitzpatrick gets a call from the Department of Transportation. A man named Warren Marshall just tried to renew his driver's license in Louisville, Kentucky. Fitzpatrick flies to Louisville that afternoon. He leads a team of FBI agents to the used car lot where Floyd had gotten a job as a salesman. With little fanfare, Floyd is arrested for Michael's kidnapping. But there's a problem.

Michael is nowhere to be found. They search Floyd's apartment and find nothing. They interview the neighbors, Floyd's coworkers, and none of them recall seeing a child with Floyd in the week since he's arrived in town. When they interrogate Floyd, he won't say a word about where the boy is. But other people will, and their statements are chilling. One of Floyd's friends from jail says he didn't just confess to killing Michael. He said he threw the boy.

off a bridge. But it seems Floyd can't keep his own story straight. His sister tells police he told her he drowned Michael in the bathtub. He's repeatedly admitting to murder, but changing the details about exactly how he did it. The FBI searches every inch of the area, every lake and river, they don't find any trace of Michael. Cadaver dogs alert to a scent in Floyd's truck, leading police to believe he killed Michael and transported his body in his car. but they don't know where. With no proof Michael is even dead, they can't charge Floyd with murder.

Ultimately, Floyd is only charged with kidnapping, carrying a firearm, and car theft. The proceedings take a few months, but in August 1995, Floyd is found guilty of kidnapping Michael Hughes. He's sentenced to 52 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Since he's 52 years old,

that amounts to a life sentence. With Floyd behind bars, detectives take the opportunity to question him about another cold case, the disappearance of Cheryl Commesso. There have been significant developments in Cheryl's case since she went missing, and Floyd has some explaining to do. Every outfit starts with a choice. What am I wearing underneath? Something comfortable?

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Try Activia today. Enjoying activity twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. 19-year-old Cheryl Camesso disappeared from Tampa, Florida in 1989, shortly after getting on the bad side of a man she knew as Warren Marshall. By 1995, the FBI know that Warren Marshall is actually convicted kidnapper Franklin Delano Floyd. With Floyd now in prison, they approach him to see. if he's got anything to say about Cheryl's disappearance. As it turns out, there have been some major developments in her case in just the last few months. Earlier that March, a landscaping worker found a skeleton near a landfill in Pinellas County,

Florida. A root had grown through the bones of the right leg. A forensic botanist said that part of the route was several years old, meaning the remains could have been there for six years. Lead fragments were recovered from the skull, consistent with two 222, caliber bullets. The cause of death, two gunshots to the head. Eventually, the remains were identified as Cheryl Camesso. This development seemed to open the floodgates because two days after the skull was found, another huge discovery fell into the FBI's lap. A mechanic in Texas was working on a truck he'd recently purchased at an auction. He knew the white Ford pickup had been stolen in

Oklahoma and later found in Dallas, Texas. What he didn't know, is that the previous owner of the truck was James Davis, the principal of Indian Meridian Elementary School. This was the truck Michael Hughes was kidnapped in. While fixing up the vehicle, the mechanic found something hidden on the top of the gas tank. An envelope full of photos. Many of them were of women and young girls

and sexually explicit poses. Some showed a woman who'd been bound and severely beaten. He gave the photos to the police who sent them to the FBI. Special Agent Joe Fitzpatrick examined the photos himself. It took a while, but the woman who was bound and beaten was eventually identified as Cheryl. In the photos, she has swelling and redness around her right cheek, consistent with a fracture that was found on her skull. Based on the forensics, that fracture must have occurred shortly before Cheryl died,

which means Cheryl's killer must have taken the photos. and the last person to drive that truck was Franklin Delano Floyd. It's not hard for investigators to put two and two together, which is why they lay all this evidence in front of Floyd, hoping for a quick confession. Floyd won't give it to them. They're forced to turn to a grand jury. At the hearing, authorities lay out everything they know about Cheryl,

her argument with Floyd shortly before her disappearance. Her body dumped on the side of the interstate. The photos of her being tortured found in the truck Floyd had stolen. On November 12, 1997, the grand jury indicts Floyd for first-degree murder. It takes five years for the case to go to trial, but once the proceedings are underway, they go quickly. In 2002, after nine days of testimony and four hours of deliberation, Floyd is found guilty of murdering Cheryl Commesso.

this time he sentenced to death. But that's still not the end of the story. Authorities are still wondering what really happened to Michael, who was Sharon Marshall, and what's her connection to Floyd? Some answers appear to be on the horizon, because something else was also found in that envelope from the Ford pickup. Among the nearly 100 photographs, investigators piece together a series

depicting the same girl over the course of her whole adolescence. There's pictures of her as a child, a teenager, and an adult. Many of the photos are pornographic. When the photos land in the hands of Special Agent Fitzpatrick, he recognizes the girl immediately. It's Sharon Marshall, aka Tanya Hughes. As far as investigators can tell, this woman was never a willing partner in crime.

It appears Floyd kidnapped her as a young child. It's a major discovery, their first real, clue about who Sharon could be and how this twisted story all started. It also completely changes the way authorities think about this case. If anything, it makes them even more determined to find Sharon's real name. But they don't know where to turn next. Because based on her age, Floyd must have kidnapped this girl in the mid-1970s, and that presents a serious problem. There was no centralized database for missing child cases until the mid-1980s. Finding the identity of a child who was kidnapped 10 years before that is going to be

nearly impossible, especially considering the FBI has no idea what city or even what state she was taken from. Agent Fitzpatrick uses every tool at his disposal to search for the girl's true identity. He searches for years, but there's no progress. Eventually, Fitzpatrick retires with the investigation still incomplete. It shelved for over a decade. Then, in 2013, the FBI does a cold case review of the Michael Hughes kidnapping. The next year, agents spend days interviewing Floyd in prison.

And after 11 years on death row, he's unusually cooperative. He reveals two secrets, one of which he's been keeping for almost half his life. First, Floyd tells them the truth about what happened to Michael. On the long drive from Oklahoma City to Dallas, Floyd said the six-year-old's behavior was getting on his nerves. So he shot Michael twice in the back of the head and buried him off the interstate near the Oklahoma, Texas border. Not only that, Floyd reveals Sharon Marshall's true identity.

This is the story he tells. It was 1973. Floyd was on the run after skipping bail, going by the name Brandon Williams. He met a woman named Sandra Brandenburg in North Carolina. Just two weeks after meeting, the pair married and later moved to Pennsylvania with Sandra's three daughters.

Then, in 1975, Sandra was arrested for writing a bad check and had to spend 30 days in jail. When she got out, her new husband and children were gone. Sandra found two of her daughters living in a church. The only daughter she couldn't find was Suzanne Savacus, because Floyd kept her. From the time she was six years old, Floyd, Even Suzanne bounced around the country living under various pseudonyms. All the while, Suzanne attended public school, was involved in extracurriculars, and had a small group of friends, none of whom knew her real name or understood what was going on in her home.

In high school, she joined the Air Force ROTC and dreamed of becoming an aerospace engineer. As her graduation neared, she got a scholarship to her dream school, Georgia Tech. But before she could even enroll, Floyd whisked her away to Phoenix. None of her friends ever heard from her again. Months later, Suzanne was working at a hotel restaurant when she got pregnant. The father was one of her co-workers. By the fall of 1987, Floyd once again forced her to pack up and leave town, this time to Tampa, Florida. When Suzanne had the baby, she named him Michael.

From here, you know most of the story. Suzanne worked at the Mon's Venus strip club where she met Cheryl Camesso. Cheryl reported Suzanne to social services, enraged Floyd murdered Cheryl, and he and Suzanne fled the state. Floyd likely knew authorities would be on the lookout for him and his so-called daughter, so he fabricated entirely new identities for them both. He forced Suzanne to marry him and pretend Michael was his son. Eventually they settled in Tulsa, where Suzanne got a job at Passions and took the name Tanya. Floyd, aka Clarence, made Suzanne work at the strip club and hand over her money to him at the end,

of a long night while she held on to dreams of a different life, going to college, supporting herself and Michael on her own. That was always Suzanne's goal, to make a better life for her son. In the spring of 1990, she was ready to make a break for it. She made one last-ditch effort to escape Floyd, the man who'd abused and exploited her for the last 15 years. Within days, Suzanne was dead. Even during his tell-all confession, Floyd refuses to talk about Suzanne's death. He says he's innocent and knows nothing about it.

Her murder remains officially unsolved and will likely never know the truth about what happened to Suzanne. Floyd died on death row in 2023. In a story with few bright spots, we can end on one. Suzanne's mother learned what happened to her. Her family didn't receive justice, but they did get the truth. And that made one important change possible. In 1990, Suzanne's gravestone was marked with the name Franklin Delano Floyd gave her, Tanya.

But in 2017, it was finally replaced. Now it reads, Suzanne Marie Savacus, devoted mother and friend. Thanks for tuning into Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We'll be back Monday with another episode. For more information on Franklin Delano Floyd, amongst the many sources we used, we found the books A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon, both by Matt Burbeck, extremely helpful to our research.

Stay safe out there. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, edited by Karris Allen and Andrew Kelleher, researched by Mickey Taylor, fact-checked by Bennett Logan and Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Janice Morgan. Want to hear something spooky.

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