A Beautiful Child

by Matt Birkbeck

  “Oh my God!” shouted Fitzpatrick. “He kidnapped her too!

  CHAPTER 14

  Dallas, Texas, police officer Amilio Ayala was working regular patrol duty on Saturday, October 22, 1994, when he pulled up to the massive Wonder Bread factory on Denton Street. The facility took up four square blocks and employed more than five hundred people who baked and distributed bread and other products twenty-four hours a day. Three parking lots surrounded the facility, one in the front used by supervisors and office personnel, another in the back reserved for employees, and another on the side used by mechanics. The employee parking lot in the back was adjacent to Love Field airport, and a DART, or Dallas Area Rapid Transit station, was down the street.

  Ayala, assigned to the Northwest bicycle patrol, was scheduled to help with security for the annual Wonder Bread open house. He unlocked his bike from the back of the patrol car and was pulling it down when he was approached by several factory workers.

  A white Ford pickup truck had been parked for several weeks in the employee lot, and they believed it was stolen. They took Ayala to the truck, a Ford F150, the back of which was parked against the building. The Oklahoma license on the back read QCN305. Ayala peered inside the driver’s window and saw the radio was still in place and the steering column untouched.

  Ayala called in the plate number to central command, asking if it was hot. The response was quick: The truck was stolen out of Oklahoma City. The perpetrator was believed to be Franklin Delano Floyd, who was wanted for kidnapping. He was considered armed and extremely dangerous and in the company of a six-year-old boy.

  Ayala roped off the car and waited for backup to arrive.

  Word that the truck had been found in Dallas traveled immediately to the Oklahoma City FBI field office, and Joe Fitzpatrick called Mark Yancey at the U.S. Attorney’s office, asking for and receiving an additional arrest warrant, this one for kidnapping.

  Floyd had traveled out of state, and finding the truck was the first real clue in the now six-week search for Floyd and Michael. Fitzpatrick rarely left his office, continuing his grueling all-day and all-night, seven-days-a-week schedule, catching much needed sleep whenever he could. The news about the truck produced a newfound sense of urgency. All involved in the investigation were tired and frustrated. Promising leads that sent agents to cities throughout the country turned up new information about Floyd, but not Floyd himself.

  If one thing was clear, Floyd was not stupid. During his years as a fugitive, he had proved resourceful. He remained in a few select states, subsisting with the help of a network of former inmates who helped him with birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and, if needed, food and money. The help went way back, starting with David Dial, Floyd’s old friend from prison.

  Dial provided room and board after Floyd’s release from the halfway house in 1973. Floyd got a job prepping rental cars for Avis at the Atlanta airport but quickly got into trouble. It was Dial who bailed Floyd out of jail after his arrest for attacking a woman at a drive-in restaurant. Floyd fled prior to his trial and Dial claimed he didn’t hear from him for seventeen years. The FBI didn’t believe him. Dial had been in and out of jail for thirty years and had no love for law enforcement. Floyd was his friend. So when Dial was asked what he knew about the girl traveling with Floyd, he said that Floyd told him her mother was a crack addict and he just took the girl, who was four years old, to keep her out of that environment.

  “I believe him, too. She was never on any milk carton, was she? No,” said Dial.

  The story didn’t move Dial’s interviewers, who knew that it was Dial who provided shelter when Floyd bolted Oklahoma after Tonya’s death. Floyd used the name Daniel Pittman and even had an I.D. that read Pittman.

  “Franklin was real good with I.D.s,” said Dial, who took great satisfaction in the FBI’s inability to find his friend. “You know he learned that in prison, which is pretty funny, ain’t it? Prison is a good teacher. If you ain’t a criminal when you get in, you will be when you get out.”

  When Fitzpatrick read the notes from the David Dial interview, he felt a sudden urge to jump on a plane and fly to Georgia himself. Dial knew more than he was saying, a lot more—especially when it came to the mystery of Tonya.

  Fitzpatrick had sent notices to field offices throughout the country, and the information that began to arrive daily at a steady pace helped fill in some of the blanks in the Floyd timeline.

  After Floyd, using the name Trenton Davis, resurfaced in 1975 in Oklahoma City, he enrolled Tonya, then known as Suzanne, in the public school system. She was said to be bright, and could read, spell, add, and subtract by the age of five, or whatever her real age was when she entered the first grade.

  The pair fled in 1978 following a babysitter’s allegations that Floyd was sexually abusing his daughter. No charges were filed and they disappeared for two years, eventually ending up in Louisville in 1980 with new identities, Warren and Sharon Marshall. Floyd worked as a painter and joined the local Kiwanis club and a Baptist church. He and Sharon attended church together regularly every Sunday. Sharon performed exceptionally well in school but two years later they abruptly left Louisville for Atlanta. They kept their identities, Warren and Sharon Marshall, and lived in north Atlanta, where Sharon was enrolled as a freshman at Northside High School.

  But she didn’t finish the school year, transferring to Baldwin High School in May 1983. It wasn’t lost on Fitzpatrick that Reidsville State Prison was in Milledgeville, about one hundred miles east of Atlanta and the same prison where Floyd served time from 1967 to 1971. Fitzpatrick did not believe in coincidences. He knew Floyd returned to Milledgeville for a reason—just what, he didn’t know. Fitzpatrick’s interest was further piqued when he saw that Sharon was pulled out of Baldwin High School just four months later, in September, right after the start of a new school year. They moved back to Atlanta, and Sharon enrolled at Riverdale High School, where she remained from September 1983 to January 1984 before transferring to Forest Park High School, where she remained until her graduation in June 1986.

  They later turned up in Phoenix, Arizona, where Sharon took a job as a hostess at the Marriott Hotel restaurant near the airport. There she met Greg Higgs.

  Fitzpatrick obtained copies of Floyd’s phone records dating back to when he arrived in Tulsa, and noticed among the names a call to Greg Higgs in Phoenix in May 1990, just days after Sharon’s death.

  Fitzpatrick reached Higgs, and learned that he was Michael’s biological father. He was twenty years old and working as a waiter in 1986, having arrived from Seattle a year earlier to attend college. Tall and thin with dark hair and sharp features, Higgs rented an apartment nearby and worked at the restaurant after school to make ends meet.

  When the new hostess arrived at the Marriott, she created a stir among the men who worked there, including Higgs. Sharon was friendly and outgoing and talked to everyone, from the busboys to the maître d’. She was attractive and easy to like, and rode a purple scooter to and from work. Higgs was smitten and eventually worked up the courage to talk to her a day after she arrived. Sharon made it easy, smiling and engaging in conversation, even asking about his interests and goals in life.

  Sharon said she planned on studying aerospace engineering at Arizona State.

  Higgs got up his nerve and asked her out for a date. She smiled and said, “Yes.”

  Higgs thought that was too easy.

  They decided to go “float” the Salt River, sitting in inner tubes as the lazy river carried them downstream.

  Higgs drove to Sharon’s house, which was in a trailer park on the outskirts of Phoenix. Sharon was waiting by the front door. As soon as Higgs arrived she called out to her father, who emerged from the back of the trailer.

  He introduced himself as Warren, eyed Higgs from head to toe, and made it clear he wanted his daughter home by midnight.

  “And don’t let my daughter drown,” he said as he walked into the house.

  Higgs and Sharo
n spent the afternoon in the water and under a sun that produced 110 degree heat. As they floated down the river, Sharon told Higgs that she was from Georgia and her mom had died when she was young. She had planned on going to Georgia Tech, but her father’s health was poor, so they moved to Arizona hoping the low humidity would help his back. Sharon talked about her good marks in high school, and said that she was a lieutenant colonel in the ROTC.

  Being from Georgia explained the slight southern twang, thought Higgs.

  Following their “float” they stopped for cheeseburgers and French fries before Higgs drove Sharon home, hours ahead of the deadline set by her father.

  “He just looks out for me,” said Sharon, explaining why her father appeared to be so strict.

  Higgs didn’t mind. He kissed her and asked for another date. Sharon smiled, said, “Yes,” and then “good night.”

  Over the next three months, their relationship blossomed into something more serious. Higgs occasionally saw Warren, usually when he picked Sharon up from work. Only once did he see Warren inside the restaurant, roughly a week after Sharon struck up a conversation with several businessmen. They had stopped for a bite to eat between flights, engaged Sharon in conversation, and became smitten with the young hostess who was working to save money for college. So impressed were the businessmen, they offered to pay her tuition.

  Sharon was taken aback, thanked the men, and then said she wanted them to meet her father. They told her they’d be traveling through again in a week. When they arrived, waiting for them was Warren, who dismissed any conversation about college and awkwardly tried to convince them to invest in a house painting business. It sounded like a scam to Higgs, who remained quiet.

  When it was all over and the men had left, Sharon seemed down. They had withdrawn their offer and wished Sharon well.

  “What was that all about?” asked Higgs.

  Sharon wouldn’t say, offering only that her father was trying to get his feet back on the ground. She walked away abruptly, ending the conversation.

  The next day Sharon returned to her cheerful self again, and remained that way for two months, when she surprised Higgs with a note.

  It had been left with another hostess, who waited a day to give it to Higgs. Sharon had left Arizona. She had apparently come into the restaurant, picked up her last paycheck, and was gone. The letter didn’t say much other than that Sharon and her father had to leave.

  Two months later Higgs received a letter in the mail postmarked Texas. It was from Sharon and began, “Dear Greg.” Sharon explained that her leaving wasn’t his fault, that the relationship had been working well. But her father’s health was deteriorating and they had to move.

  Higgs didn’t understand why they’d moved to Texas. It was just as hot as Arizona, and far more humid. The envelope had no return address, so Higgs couldn’t write back. He thought he had seen the last of Sharon Marshall.

  Eight months later, in the spring of 1987, Higgs walked into work and to his surprise saw Sharon standing at her old station.

  She reentered his life as suddenly as she had left it, explaining that she and her father had just returned to Arizona after traveling to Texas and several other states, none of which she identified. Her father couldn’t acclimate to the weather, as his back illness flared up every other day.

  “Don’t hate me,” she said, looking Higgs in the eyes.

  “I don’t,” said Higgs, who was actually pleased to see his old girlfriend.

  He had dated several other girls during the prior year, none of whom matched Sharon’s beauty or intelligence.

  They quickly became a couple again, though Higgs made it a point to avoid Sharon’s father at all costs. Their relationship continued through the fall of 1987, when Higgs arrived at work one day to learn that Sharon had once again quit her job and, just like the last time, disappeared.

  He never saw Sharon again.

  Higgs told Fitzpatrick he never knew Sharon was pregnant, and only learned he had a son when he received that call from Floyd in May 1990, who had assumed his previous identity of Warren Marshall.

  Warren told him that Sharon was dead, killed in a car accident just days earlier, and that Higgs was the father of her two-year-old son, Michael.

  “Sharon was working as a topless dancer in Arizona and we left because she didn’t want to screw things up for you. She thought if you knew you had a kid you’d stop going to school,” said Warren. “We went to Puerto Rico for a year. Now she’s dead, and I need to know if you’ll take the boy.”

  Higgs was stunned. He also didn’t flinch, saying he’d take Michael. Warren said he’d get back to him in a day or so, but never called. That was the last Higgs ever heard from Warren Marshall.

  After leaving Phoenix in 1987, the Marshalls’ trail took them to Florida, where they lived in the Tampa area until 1989. They ended up in Tulsa, but stopped first in New Orleans to marry.

  It was a bizarre tale, one that Fitzpatrick had a difficult time comprehending much less explaining: Floyd kidnapped a toddler, raised her as his daughter, eventually married her, killed her, then kidnapped her son. It was tragic, sad, unbelievable, and diabolical. It made him boil. The hardened special agent allowed his emotions to transport him to the edge of that forbidden border, where cool objectivity blurred into compulsive rage.

  Fitzpatrick sat at his desk and took a deep breath, regaining his composure and senses. He knew that Franklin Floyd had already ruined one young life.

  Fitzpatrick didn’t want him to destroy another.

  Flushing Floyd out of wherever he was hiding was proving difficult, so Fitzpatrick devised a plan. It was a long shot. Floyd’s movements had a familiar pattern, and always ended with him living in either Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia, Arizona, or Florida, “safe grounds,” particularly the Atlanta area, which seemed to hold a special attraction for Floyd. Fitzpatrick notified the state department of transportation offices in each of those states to be on the lookout for driver’s license applications under the names Franklin Floyd, Trenton Davis, Clarence Hughes, or Warren Marshall.

  Two weeks later, on November 9, Fitzpatrick received a call from a clerk at the Florida Department of Transportation. A man named Warren Marshall sought to renew his Florida driver’s license.

  He was in Louisville, Kentucky.

  CHAPTER 15

  Joe Fitzpatrick boarded a plane and arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, late in the afternoon on November 9, 1994. Agents from the FBI’s Louisville field office greeted him, then directed him to a waiting car, where he was briefed.

  Floyd was working as a salesman at a used car lot, JD Byrider Sales, on Preston Highway. He was expecting his driver’s license from the Florida Department of Transportation to arrive the next morning via Federal Express.

  The plan was simple. An FBI agent impersonating a Federal Express driver would pull up to the used car lot and deliver Floyd’s package, preferably outside, where Floyd would be arrested.

  Fitzpatrick still held out slight hope that Michael was alive, and he cautioned the team that it was in their best interest that Floyd’s arrest go smoothly.

  Fitzpatrick, six agents from the Louisville field office, and a contingent of local police surrounded the car lot, closing off each escape route though remaining out of sight. At 9:45 A.M. the Federal Express truck arrived. An FBI agent, wearing a purple Federal Express uniform, walked into the parking lot, and Fitzpatrick watched from an unmarked car as a man who matched Floyd’s description walked out of the office to meet the driver.

  When the agent handed over the package, Floyd was quickly surrounded by seven FBI agents, guns drawn.

  Floyd was startled but remained calm.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “I have a copy of a warrant issued out of Oklahoma for kidnapping for Franklin Floyd,” said Fitzpatrick.

  “You have the wrong person,” said Floyd.

  Fitzpatrick coolly pulled a laminated fingerprint card out of his jacket pocket and h
eld it up in front of Floyd.

  “We’ll know soon,” he said.

  Floyd didn’t waste another second.

  “I’m Franklin Floyd,” he said, giving himself up with no resistance.

  Fitzpatrick read Floyd his rights, handcuffed him, and then asked him the question he’d been waiting to ask for nearly two months.

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “He’s fine,” said Floyd. “He’s not here, but he’s fine.”

  Floyd was led to the back of an unmarked car while agents searched through his green duffel bag and wallet.

  The bag produced a single bus ticket from Atlanta to Louisville, dated September 30, and a map of Atlanta torn from an atlas. Inside the wallet were three photos: one of Sharon when she was a teenager, another of Michael as an infant lying naked in his crib, and a third of an unidentified woman. She appeared to have dark hair down to the shoulders and full cheeks and lips. The photo was old, though the woman’s features were clear.

  Also found inside the wallet was an address book with current addresses and phone numbers for his sister, Dorothy Leonard; his old prison friend, David Dial; another woman, Rebecca Barr; and the name and current address of the woman Floyd was convicted of raping in 1962 when she was only four years old.

  “What’s this all about?” said Fitzpatrick, startled by the discovery.

  Floyd said nothing. Fitzpatrick sat beside him in the car as agent Mack Bond drove them to the Louisville field office, followed by a contingent of police and unmarked FBI cars. Once inside the FBI field office Floyd remained handcuffed and was taken to a small room, where he sat down at a rectangular table. Bond closed the door, and Fitzpatrick pulled out the photo of the girl known as Suzanne Davis in 1975, sitting on the lap of a much younger Franklin Floyd.