A Beautiful Child

by Matt Birkbeck

  Alley, in essence, defined the word parent in the federal statute, to be used in federal prosecutions and courts throughout the country.

  His fate sealed, Floyd was led to the back of the courthouse and changed from his blue suit into a prison jumpsuit. He was an inmate again, and come his sentencing in August, he probably would be for the rest of his life.

  He was taken to a side door to a waiting prison transport, but the route was blocked by dozens of reporters and television cameras. The calmness Floyd exhibited earlier in the courtroom before Judge Alley evaporated before the media, and he became irate. He spit at one reporter, then raised his hands and stuck his middle fingers into the television cameras screaming “Fuck Oklahoma!”

  CHAPTER 20

  It was little more than a week after the Floyd trial ended when Joe Fitzpatrick arrived at his sixteenth-floor office early the morning of Wednesday, April 19. He was prepared to continue with his search to identify Sharon Marshall, the last resting place of Michael Hughes, and the identity of the brutally tortured woman in Floyd’s photo album. Ed Kumiega and Mark Yancey had taken some well-deserved time off. Kumiega went fishing; Yancey played plenty of golf.

  Fitzpatrick was pleased with the verdict in the Floyd trial and the work of the two prosecutors, but felt little satisfaction with the outcome. Questions remained, with so few answers. His personal record of closing every case during his twenty-five year career with the FBI was now in jeopardy. As he began to entertain thoughts of retirement, Fitzpatrick knew he could not leave the bureau without closure.

  He spent the week following the trial focusing on the tortured woman. Nothing in the photos suggested a location. The woman was on what appeared to be a sofa. She was blindfolded, terrified, perhaps just moments away from death. She had long fingernails, and her T-shirt had been pushed up to her neck, exposing her breasts and stomach. Whatever type of pants or undergarment she had been wearing had been removed.

  Fitzpatrick had already checked with the National Crime Information Center database, but there wasn’t enough information to help wade through the tens of thousands of women reported missing each year. Fitzpatrick sent a teletype to bureaus throughout the country, seeking information on any women reported missing who might fit the general description of the victim.

  As the new week began, and Fitzpatrick waited for responses on the unidentified woman, he directed his attention to Sharon.

  He called social services and was sent a list of the missing-child clearinghouses from each state. Fitzpatrick intended to write to each and every one of them and include the copy of the photo of Sharon when she was a toddler, but decided he needed at least one day off to clear his head, and put in for a leave of absence on April 19 to go fishing.

  When he woke that morning it was windy and he knew the fish wouldn’t be biting, so he cancelled his leave and went to work. He decided he’d go to the courthouse and pick up the exhibits used in the Floyd trial, but telephone calls kept him at his office. At 9:02 A.M. he was on the phone again when he felt a slight vibration. Then came the loud noise. Startled FBI personnel looked out the window and could see the dark smoke and debris rising into the air from the downtown area some seven miles away.

  Everyone in the office, including Fitzpatrick, stood up, unsure of what was happening. Some thought a plane had crashed, others that a gas line had exploded. Within minutes everyone knew that a massive explosion had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, right across the street from the courthouse. The nine-story building had been blown in half, and it was clear there were fatalities, perhaps a great loss of life.

  Throughout the FBI field office, agents and their supervisors managed to remain calm and focused, but other personnel, including secretaries, were beside themselves. Some there had family members who worked at the Murrah building, and the violent images of destruction and blood and chaos relayed over the television within minutes after the explosion were devastating.

  Every one of the one hundred and twenty agents assigned to Oklahoma City was pulled off whatever cases they were working on and immediately assigned to work the bombing, including Joe Fitzpatrick. Before leaving the office for the makeshift command center near the destroyed Murrah building, Fitzpatrick took his Floyd file and photos and put them inside his desk.

  Floyd, Sharon, Michael, and the unidentified woman would be forgotten as Fitzpatrick began his work on the Oklahoma bomber investigation.

  Four months would pass before Fitzpatrick would be forced to take his attention off the bombing investigation to attend Franklin Floyd’s sentencing in August.

  A total of 168 people were killed in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building; nineteen of the dead were children. Another five hundred people were injured. Timothy McVeigh, twenty-seven, had been arrested for driving without a license just ninety minutes after the explosion by an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer. Two days later McVeigh was charged with the bombing, and the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office coordinated the bureau’s national investigation. The field office saw its ranks swell as agents were brought in from other bureaus throughout the country.

  The probe replaced all activity at the field office, and other cases were pushed to the backburner as the government painstakingly collected its evidence with the ultimate goal of convicting Timothy McVeigh with 168 counts of murder.

  Franklin Floyd remained at the Oklahoma County Jail and had plenty of time to prepare a statement to be read prior to learning his fate. When he was brought before Judge Alley on August 10, Floyd threw himself at the mercy of the court and requested the opportunity to read his entire statement.

  “I’m a threat to no one. I’m an old man. I’m dying brokenhearted. And I’m going to die in prison, that’s a fact. There’s not but very little more you can do to me, so I’d like to have a little consideration.”

  Judge Alley sat back and let Floyd continue. It was a lengthy, rambling statement in which Floyd professed his love for Michael, the injustice in his life, and acceptance of the upcoming sentence. And as he did during his final argument during the trial, Floyd, who was now fifty-two years old, blamed his lot on the injustice of life and past abuse.

  “I wrote the FBI from the dungeons of prison, in tears from being raped and beaten maliciously, and called names of untold horror, because of a conviction that I was innocent of, and used that as a tool to rape and abuse me. These people sitting out here don’t know the truth. They can’t handle the truth,” said Floyd, pointing toward the prosecutors.

  “When this case was brought up, the DHS personnel did everything in their power to crucify me, and took my son without a hearing, as required by law. And the judge said these words, ‘No child molester will get this kid.’ You’re talking about a malicious society! I was seventeen years without an arrest! I haven’t had a conviction for any crime in thirty years! And all my time has been spent in prison or on the run. You don’t know me. I got my hand scalded for playing with myself, had to eat cigarette butts for smoking, washed my mouth out with soap. When I was a kid at the orphans’ home I cried out for help, but there were no laws back then, nothing about child abuse. They could beat you until your feet swoll up this thick with pus in them and no one would do nothing. When I got old enough to read a road map I took off, and I didn’t care about starving.”

  Floyd turned toward Joe Fitzpatrick.

  “Mr. Fitzpatrick wants to know why I don’t go to him with what I know. I could clear up all his mysteries. The reason I don’t is because he don’t understand it, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t have any compassion. Just simple as that.”

  Floyd flipped over another page, and Judge Alley could see there were several more to follow. His patience was growing thin as Floyd continued.

  “Judge, I had been a terrible person and man all of my life. A man can’t go through my scars and come out all right. Oh, great one, you’ve not walked in my shoes, yet you stand in my judgment, and that’s the law and your duty. You couldn’t give me less time if you wa
nted, the guideline, you can show me no mercy, I ask you for none.”

  Before he could read another word Judge Alley stepped in, telling Floyd he had given him considerable time to speak, and now it was Ms. Otto’s turn.

  Floyd hobbled over to the defense table, satisfied that he had made his argument and hoping the judge had heard his plea.

  Otto rose, and cited the difficulty of a case that presented challenging legal issues, particularly the definition of a “parent.”

  She then turned toward Floyd.

  “Mr. Floyd is probably one of the most pain-filled people I have ever met, a person institutionalized to the extent that presents a very altered perception of the world when they’re out among us and trying to explain themselves and their actions.

  “Mr. Floyd is a prime example of what happens early in our childhood when our system, for whatever reason, whether it’s the traditional nuclear family unit or our governmental substitutes for those units, somehow failed to address important issues. It is inevitable, it seems, that a person who lives in such a deprived circumstance finds it virtually impossible to live in the world with any degree of success. In many ways Mr. Floyd is still a six-year-old who wants to get you to listen to him about everything and all things, because life for Mr. Floyd is one long waking nightmare.”

  Otto asked the judge to sentence Floyd to the minimum set under the sentencing guidelines, which was 20 years.

  Ed Kumiega quickly stood up and asked Judge Alley to throw the sentencing book at Floyd—a life sentence.

  “Michael Hughes has been gone three hundred and thirty-three days,” said Kumiega, reminding all that if Michael were still in Choctaw living with the Bean family he’d be entering second grade.

  “He can’t meet wonderful friends anymore. He doesn’t have playmates. He can’t experience learning something new, all because of some attitude, some fixation by the defendant toward this child. That’s the real pain here. Mr. Floyd deserves everything he gets today. And the consistent core with his allocution and presentation today is that Mr. Floyd is a fraud.”

  Judge Alley agreed with Kumiega and sentenced Floyd to a total of fifty-two years and three months in prison, without the possibility of parole. It wasn’t a life sentence, but Floyd would certainly die in prison.

  Before Floyd was led out of the courtroom, assured of living his remaining years in a prison cell, Judge Alley offered one closing thought.

  “I’ve viewed Mr. Floyd through the many proceedings in the case, concluding with today’s proceedings, and I find that he has one conspicuous attribute, and that is the attribute of rationalizing his conduct, that he looks at the world in an extremely idiosyncratic way, an idiosyncratic way driven by his own needs, without regard to the rights of others or the dangers that his conduct might pose to others.”

  Floyd was gone, to rot in jail, and Ed Kumiega, Mark Yancey, and especially Joe Fitzpatrick couldn’t have felt any more satisfaction.

  They shared a hope that one day they would find the true identity of Sharon Marshall, along with the identity of the tortured woman and the remains of Michael Hughes. But those were investigations that would be continued another time. They all had other business at hand, and they returned to their offices to continue their respective work on the bombing investigation, work that filled their days and nights as Floyd did prior to April 19, 1995.

  CHAPTER 21

  St. Petersburg, Florida

  July 1996

  St. Petersburg Police Detective Robert Schock didn’t know what to make of the phone call he received on July 16, 1996, from the FBI’s Tampa field office. They had photographs of an unidentified woman that could pertain to Schock’s case involving the Jane Doe of I-275, and wanted to meet.

  Schock was surprised and taken off guard. His investigation had stalled a year earlier, and nothing since had surfaced to help identify the victim.

  His probe began after the remains of a woman were found a year earlier, on March 29, 1995, off the side of I-275 by a laborer, Terry Lee Ricard, who was working with a crew clearing the east side of the highway just south of the Roosevelt Boulevard exit.

  Ricard had to urinate and decided to walk through a three-foot hole in a chain link fence and relieve himself in the brush.

  The fence, which was about five feet high and served as a barrier to an old landfill, was some forty feet away from the interstate but ran parallel with the highway for about a half a mile before turning inland near Roosevelt Boulevard.

  Ricard zipped up his pants, then retraced his steps through the hole and along the fence line, evading water that had typically collected through the year. The crew tried to clear the area in February, only to find it was still submerged and filled with the usual flotsam and cyprus knots, small stumps that grew from cypress trees but looked like otherworldly anthills that grew out of the water. Palmetto trees sprouted from the mini-lagoon and provided cover from the sun.

  The crew decided to work another area and come back in a few weeks, expecting the area to have dried out, which it usually did for about a month during the spring months before filling up again.

  As expected, much of the area had dried enough to complete the cleanup, though some water remained, and Ricard tiptoed along the fence until he reached a swath of ground where the water receded, leaving the ground wet and muddy. Ricard took two steps on the sloppy surface when he saw what looked like a faded white volleyball lying in the muck. It was half buried, and Ricard approached it slowly, pulled his leg back, then let go, kicking at the object and turning it over, revealing two holes that looked like eye sockets.

  Ricard knew immediately this was no ball, and called out to his coworkers clearing out brush on the other side of the water.

  “Hey guys, there’s a skull over here.”

  He ran up and onto the side of the highway, flagging down a Florida State Highway Patrol trooper.

  The search area was just inside the St. Petersburg city limit and Bob Schock was the first detective to arrive on the scene.

  Schock was a native Floridian who had grown up in St. Petersburg. He attended St. Petersburg Community College, where he earned an associate degree in criminal justice, and remained in his hometown, joining the police department in 1977.

  Schock was a self-proclaimed lifer, a “thirty-year man” who was respected for his careful approach and unassuming way. He was lower than low-key, so quiet some of his colleagues questioned whether he even knew the definition of “ego.” Married with two teenage daughters, he looked older than his thirty-nine years, having developed soft pouches around his midsection.

  When he arrived at the scene he had already been designated lead investigator, and he quickly parceled interviews to other detectives, who arrived one after the other.

  Within a half hour, the entire side of the highway was roped off for a quarter mile in either direction. The right lane was closed, forcing traffic into the middle and left lanes, with motorists rubbernecking as the flashing lights from the dozen or so police cars parked off the road signaled the seriousness of the discovery.

  It didn’t take long to decide that the skull had apparently been submerged under the water for a long period of time, probably years. Exactly how long no one knew. All realized that if not for a series of coincidences—a receding water line and a worker with a full bladder—the skull would still be lying there, hidden and out of sight for at least another ten months when the area filled with water again.

  A backhoe was brought in to help dig for more evidence, and over the course of two days, investigators found other bones, bone fragments, hair, and teeth, along with clothing, which included a worn bikini top and a striped short-sleeve shirt. They also found jewelry.

  The human remains were sent to the medical examiner’s office and to Dr. William Maples, a forensic anthropologist who was called in from the University of Florida in Gainesville to give an estimate of the age of the “Jane Doe” and an approximation of how long she had been left there. It had already been d
etermined that the skull belonged to a woman, and two small holes in the back of the skull indicated she had been shot to death.

  The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

  Some forty personnel, including detectives and officers from the St. Petersburg police along with deputies from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office were involved during the first week of the investigation.

  On April 4, 1995, Dr. Maples submitted his report. The victim was a white female, between sixteen and twenty years old. She had been badly beaten, with apparent fractures of the face. Two gunshot entry holes were marked in the back of the skull, just above the neck. Fragments from one of the bullets, a .22 caliber, were found inside the skull. Only three ribs were missing from the recovered skeleton, along with eight vertebrae and various elements of the hands and feet. The remains were in good condition, preserved by the water and muck. Estimation of time of death was extremely difficult, said Maples, but his best guess was two to three years earlier, perhaps around 1992.

  Schock began checking missing-persons reports from neighboring police agencies, searching for women who fit the age range. But he added two years to Maples’s estimate, and checked records dating back to 1990, just to be sure.

  To help with the possible identification, the St. Petersburg Police held a press conference on April 6, hoping to generate leads. They received thirty calls, and Schock followed up on each one. In addition, Schock received another fifty possible matches from the National Crime Information Center.

  Schock never realized there were this many reported missing women in the Tampa-St. Petersburg region, and these were only the women who fit the age of his Jane Doe. With eighty leads to search through, Schock needed help, and enlisted the aid of Detective Mark Deasaro.