A Beautiful Child

by Matt Birkbeck

  Dial would nod his head in agreement.

  “Southern Christians are some of the most sadistic people around,” said Dial. “They’d beat you to death in the name of Jesus.”

  In November 1971, Franklin was paroled from his state sentence as part of a mandatory release program and sent to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta to serve his remaining sentence for the 1962 escape attempt from the federal prison at Chillicothe, Ohio.

  The United States Penitentiary in Atlanta served as the birthplace of a revolution in prison life. Inmates there supported a new “religion” called the Church of the New Song, or CONS. They fought for and won legal recognition as an official “church,” which provided, within its bylaws, that worshipers be served “communion,” or Harvey’s Bristol Cream and steak, on Sundays.

  Given the revolutionary rhetoric and raw emotions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, jailhouse lawyers and others with a penchant for rabble-rousing were drawn to the new church, including Franklin Floyd. CONS offered new friendships and associations. Inmates, unaware of his child-molesting conviction, now simply called him Floyd.

  A year later Floyd was paroled from his federal sentence. He was sent to a halfway house in November 1972, and released in January 1973. He remained in the Atlanta area but was arrested on January 27 for attempting to kidnap a woman by sticking his finger in her back near a gas station and demanding she take him into her car. After driving off, Floyd slapped the woman, called her a bitch, and grabbed at her clothes. The woman screamed, stopped the car, and managed to escape. Floyd was taken into custody on February 2, 1973. He called his friend David Dial, who had been released, and he posted the three thousand dollar bond.

  Floyd failed to appear for his trial on June 11 and federal authorities issued a warrant for his arrest as a parole violator.

  No records existed of Floyd’s whereabouts from June 1973 until his arrival in Tulsa the summer of 1989, leaving a sixteen-year mystery for police to solve.

  CHAPTER 10

  Michael Hughes’s first five days with Ernest and Merle Bean were disastrous. He cried every day, made grunting and growling noises, would not talk, would not sleep, and continually banged his head against the floor. On the sixth day, the screaming subsided, as did the crying. He still wouldn’t talk, but he began to pay attention to some of the other children in the house and, for short moments, watched cartoons on television.

  On May 3, the Beans received a call from DHS informing them that a formal complaint had been filed alleging that Michael was mistreated under his father’s care. Michael was to remain with DHS until the matter was investigated.

  Social worker Toni Sanders interviewed Joe Dunn, the Hughes’s landlord in Tulsa. Dunn said he had known the Hughes for approximately seven months. They claimed to have come from Alabama, where Clarence worked as a painter, and were in the process of purchasing their rented mobile home and the surrounding property when Tonya died. Dunn said he had been in the Hughes’s home several times, had never seen any evidence of neglect toward Michael, nor had he ever seen any signs of drugs or alcohol. If anything, said Dunn, Clarence was always bragging about his son, telling people how smart he was.

  Kevin Brown told Sanders that he was in love with Tonya Hughes and was planning to help her leave Tulsa with her son. A recent change in her attitude summoned the courage to begin talking about divorce and the start of a new life. Kevin wanted to be part of that life. Tonya was deathly afraid of her husband, and for good reason. She told Kevin that Clarence had terrible secrets, the kind that could put someone in jail for life. Kevin had wanted to hear more, but Tonya had ended the discussion.

  In the end, all that Kevin really knew about Tonya was that her parents were killed in a car accident when she was a child and that she had no other living relatives. Tonya had known her husband, Clarence, her entire life. He lived down the road from where she grew up in Alabama. They had a child together, and married in New Orleans before landing in Tulsa.

  On May 10, DHS notified the Beans that Michael’s father had disappeared, and that DHS was moving ahead through the courts to terminate Clarence’s parental status. Michael was to be placed in permanent foster care.

  Merle wasted no time in telling them what they should do with Michael.

  “Leave him with me,” she said.

  Despite his severe emotional state, Merle felt great empathy and became attached to the cute boy. Merle loved children, and she figured even the toughest cases were no less deserving of a loving and caring home.

  While loving Michael was one thing, caring for him would require infinite patience. He was still in diapers, wasn’t potty trained, and didn’t drink milk. When he first arrived, his bottle was filled with half water, half Pepsi Cola.

  Merle quickly changed his diet, filling his bottle with milk and giving him regular meals. Clarence had told the social worker that Michael didn’t like peanut butter, but when one of the other children in the Bean home made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Michael motioned toward the light brown jar. Merle spread some on a slice of white bread, and Michael was hooked. Soon he’d be eating peanut butter regularly and anything and everything Merle could put on his plate.

  Michael slowly adapted to life with Merle, Ernest, and their large family. On occasion, he would smile at some of the other children in the home, especially the Beans’ children. But there were constant reminders that all was not well with the boy. On trips outside the home, Michael would violently rock in his car seat, sending the full-size Chevy Van from side to side. When he was tired of rocking, he’d slam his body and head against the back of the car seat. He could barely walk and couldn’t talk, making only grunting noises. His attention span lasted but three or four minutes. It would take three months for the crying to fully subside, and a full year before he’d utter a single word.

  A week after the funeral service, Tonya Dawn Hughes was finally put to rest. Her friends at Passions collected money to transfer her body to the Park Grove Cemetery. No one called Clarence, who had seemed to drop out of sight anyway. Connie and the others were still fuming over Clarence’s behavior the week before. They had been embarrassed in their heartfelt attempt at saying good-bye to someone they loved, but really knew nothing about.

  Tonya danced at Passions for nine months yet confided in no one. Though friendly, she spoke at length to but a few people, among them Connie and Bambi. Following the burial, where it was decided that Clarence would not be told the location of Tonya’s final resting place, Connie and Bambi began to discuss locating Tonya’s family.

  Tonya had told different stories to different people. To some she said her parents were killed in a car accident when she was a child. To others she said she was estranged from her family. Connie decided to get to the bottom of it all, figuring that if Tonya did have relatives somewhere, they should know that she was dead.

  Connie turned to J.R. Buck to begin the search. He reviewed her employment application, and saw Tonya’s maiden name was Tadlock and that she was from Alabama, or so she said. J.R. figured he’d start there and called operator assistance, asking for any phone numbers related to the name Tadlock. There were several, and J.R. began dialing. Twenty minutes later, a woman answered the phone, and J.R. introduced himself as the owner of a dance club in Oklahoma.

  “Did you know a Tonya Dawn Tadlock?” said J.R.

  “Yes, I did,” said the woman. “I’m her mother.”

  J.R. paused a moment. He’d never delivered bad news before, especially telling someone that his or her child was dead.

  “Ma’am. I have some pretty bad news for you. Tonya is dead. She was killed in a car accident last week.”

  “Excuse me?” said the woman.

  “I’m calling to tell you that your daughter, Tonya, is dead.”

  “Sir, I don’t know what you’re pulling or if you’re just mistaken, but my daughter’s been dead for twenty years. She died when she was a child, only eighteen months old, from pneumonia. She’s buried in a
cemetery near me. Her name is on the gravestone. Tonya Dawn Tadlock.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Amid the steady drone of crickets hidden in the summer darkness, deputy U.S. marshals quietly surrounded the trailer home on Baron Chapel Road in Augusta, Georgia, their guns drawn. It was 3:30 A.M. Deputy U.S. marshal Thomas Brady gave the sign for the Richmond County dispatch to call inside the trailer, wake up its occupants, and inform them that they were surrounded and should come out with their hands on their heads.

  Only one individual emerged.

  Franklin Delano Floyd was handcuffed and placed in a waiting car, arrested on a felony fugitive warrant. Authorities received a tip that he had been living in Augusta for six weeks after fleeing from Oklahoma City, and working odd jobs, usually the kind of jobs people don’t ask questions about, such as carpentry or painting.

  When he was arrested, he was using the name Trenton B. Davis, and had used other aliases, including Preston Morgan, Whistle Britches Floyd, Kingfish Floyd, and Clarence Marcus Hughes, some of which he said were names he took from tombstones. Once he acknowledged his real name, he preferred to be called Floyd.

  Floyd was arraigned and taken to the Augusta-Richmond County Joint Law Enforcement Center. From there, he enlisted the assistance of his old friend David Dial who lived nearby. With the exception of one phone call from Floyd as he was leaving Tampa, Florida, during the summer of 1989, the two men had been out of touch since 1973, their last contact a postcard to Dial from Freedom Village, Illinois, near Chicago, after Floyd jumped parole.

  Floyd asked Dial to go to the trailer where he was arrested and retrieve his property. Floyd was transferred to the federal correctional facility in Atlanta, where he called the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and informed the agency that he had been arrested as a federal fugitive, having been on the run for seventeen years. He said he was going to serve his time and turn his life around and asked DHS to care for Michael until his release, at which time he planned to regain custody of his son.

  Floyd then called Mack Martin, a well-known and respected criminal attorney in Oklahoma City. He had contacted Martin before, just prior to Tonya’s funeral, to represent him before the Oklahoma County Juvenile Court in matters relating to allegations that Michael Hughes was an alleged deprived child, allegations made by Connie.

  Martin agreed to represent Floyd, who was now on the phone a month later explaining he had been arrested on a fugitive warrant, was going to serve time in prison, but did not under any circumstances want to lose custody of his son.

  Martin relayed Floyd’s wishes at a hearing before the juvenile court on August 23, 1990. Representatives from DHS argued that Floyd placed Michael in temporary foster care following the death of his mother, and then abandoned the boy when he failed to pick him up as agreed on May 7. Michael was beginning to adjust to life with his foster parents, who in turn had inquired about adoption. Martin argued that Floyd wrote his son every week, in care of DHS, and was planning to take a parenting class in prison with the ultimate goal of regaining custody when he completed his sentence. DHS officials agreed that upon Floyd’s release, he would regain custody of his son and were prepared to discuss services to address Floyd’s ability to provide a safe, loving home for Michael.

  The court recognized Floyd as Michael’s father and a review hearing was scheduled for February 1991.

  The news did not sit well with the Beans. Floyd was a convicted felon and a pedophile, and Michael was still an emotional mess. Only God and Michael’s dead mother knew why Michael was in such bad shape. While the crying subsided, he still couldn’t talk. He was two years old, still in diapers, and prone to sudden emotional outbursts.

  The Beans regularly kept DHS informed as to Michael’s condition and were instructed to take him to counseling. Upon examination the counselor determined there was nothing wrong with Michael, that he was a perfect boy in every way.

  Merle wanted to check the counselor’s credentials.

  Following several more unproductive visits Merle suggested to the counselor that he place Michael in a situation where he would be denied. Clarence left instructions never to say no to Michael.

  “He’s a perfect boy?” said Merle. “Put Michael in a negative situation.”

  Merle left the room, and a half hour later the counselor appeared.

  “We’ll have to change our evaluation,” she said.

  Floyd continued to write to Michael from his cell at the federal prison in Atlanta, though the letters never reached the boy, instead remaining with DHS. Michael was now under evaluation, and the testing revealed that he was 50 percent delayed in most areas, including speech and learning abilities, and, once he started school, would qualify for special education programming.

  In December 1990, Floyd was transferred from Atlanta to the federal prison at El Reno, near Oklahoma City. Upon his transfer, Floyd sought and was granted visitation with Michael.

  Oklahoma City police continued their investigation into the death of Tonya Dawn Hughes, and they had but one suspect, Franklin Delano Floyd. They knew of his history of violence toward his wife and had a motive, the eighty thousand dollars of insurance policies. But the police could not find that one bit of elusive evidence directly linking Floyd to the crime. Paint chips recovered at the scene of the accident indicated the car that hit Tonya was red. Floyd’s car was blue.

  Particularly frustrating for police was the victim: Tonya Dawn Tadlock Hughes had no background, and thanks to J.R. Buck, they knew it wasn’t the victim’s real name.

  Floyd would only say he met Tonya in Chicago, that they had a child together in Alabama in 1988, married in New Orleans in 1989, and ended up in Tulsa. He offered little else, which left police frustrated in their unsuccessful attempts to learn more about the mysterious woman.

  Michael Hughes was scheduled to see his father for the first time in eight months in January 1991. Floyd was an inmate at the El Reno prison, and Merle and Ernest Bean drove Michael to Midwest City, where they were to deliver Michael to a social worker. When they arrived, Merle opened the back door, but Michael wouldn’t leave his car seat. Merle reached in to grab hold of him, but Michael resisted. He then put his arms around Merle and held on tight. Ernest had to pry Michael’s fingers from Merle’s coat. They placed him in the back of the social worker’s car, but Michael wouldn’t let them close the door, so Merle held Michael in with one hand and closed the door with the other.

  Floyd was ecstatic that he would be receiving a visit from his son, and proudly spoke of Michael to anyone who would listen. The visit was supervised by a DHS social worker and lasted one hour. When Michael finally arrived, the boy was cautious and noncommunicative.

  “Come here to your daddy,” said Floyd, picking him up and holding him tight. Floyd played with him, told him how much he loved him, and guaranteed that one day soon he and his daddy would be together again.

  The review hearing on February 7, 1991, paved the way for Floyd to regain custody of Michael. Floyd agreed to complete parenting classes at a local college, and the court also ordered that Michael be circumcised, per Floyd’s wishes. On a last note before the hearing ended, the court also ordered a paternity test.

  Floyd received another visit from Michael later that month, but on March 20, 1991, Floyd was admitted to the hospital complaining of pain in the chest, arm, and leg and an inability to sleep. Doctors prescribed a halter monitor, which is worn for twenty-four hours and measures heart activity, but Floyd declined. He also refused to allow blood to be drawn for testing. An electrocardiogram test proved normal. On two occasions Floyd cursed the staff, and a psychiatric evaluation was ordered. Floyd had a long history of prescription drug use, most recently Ativan, an antidepressant. The attending psychiatrist believed that Floyd was manipulative and suffered from nervousness and panic attacks. Floyd spent twenty days in the hospital and was discharged on April 9.

  The monthly supervised visits with Michael at the El Reno prison continued through the year. Another
juvenile hearing was held on January 9, 1992. Attorney Mack Martin produced a certificate showing that Floyd completed his parental classes and also produced a marriage certificate, proving Floyd and Tonya Hughes were married in 1989.

  The court noted that the paternity test, ordered a year before, had never been completed, and the judge again ordered the test, along with an AIDS test for Michael. In addition, Floyd was ordered to pay 150 dollars per month to DHS for child support.

  Floyd agreed to the child support payments but balked at the paternity test.

  “I want you to object to the paternity test. I’m the father,” he told Martin.

  Floyd resisted the paternity test, and in his continuing bid to prove to the court he was a worthy parent, he solicited a Positive Behavior Memorandum from Cecil Nichols, a case manager at El Reno. Nichols wrote a glowing memo, commenting on Floyd’s polite and cordial behavior and work ethic.

  “Mr. Floyd has experienced several emotional difficulties while being incarcerated at FCI El Reno. He has had to deal with the death of his wife, the placement of his only child in the Department of Human Services, and being the recipient of a new criminal charge. Mr. Floyd has risen above all these difficulties with a maturity that is extraordinary. He has handled each difficulty in a very knowledgeable and businesslike manner. I have come to respect Mr. Floyd for the turmoil and tribulations he has been through during his life and hope his future will work out in a way that he is able to make a positive contribution toward society and provide his son with the guidance and upbringing he desires.”

  By July, Floyd was ordered to comply with the paternity test, and blood was drawn.