A Beautiful Child

by Matt Birkbeck

To Fitzpatrick’s dismay, the National Center never opened a file on Sharon Marshall since its Congressional mandate stipulated that services were offered only to children under eighteen years old.

  Sharon was, by all accounts, believed to have been well past her eighteenth birthday at the time of her death.

  Still, Jones helped Fitzpatrick however he could, alternately serving as a buffer and an advisor. Jones easily sensed Fitzpatrick’s frustration and despair. The two men spoke every other month, and it was clear that the veteran FBI agent placed great importance on finding Sharon’s identity.

  And like Fitzpatrick, Jones also wanted to answer all the questions that began with “Why?”

  Why did Sharon remain with Floyd? Why didn’t she tell someone her predicament?

  Jones received a partial answer from a 1995 study commissioned by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

  The report focused on the prostitution of children and, in part, on the relationship between an adult, or pimp, and child prostitute. A pimp is described as someone who becomes the primary person in a young woman’s life, who lulls a girl into believing they have a mutually developing relationship, and then she becomes emotionally and psychologically dependent on the adult.

  After creating this dependency, the adult dominates the girl and becomes an integral part of her life. He then “seasons” the girl for a life of physical and verbal abuse. “Seasoning” is described as “breaking her will and separating her so that she does not know where to turn for help. He may change her identity and move her around because constant mobility breaks any personal ties she may have developed and ensures new ties are only temporary.”

  The study revealed that the adult’s relationship to the girl parallels the dynamics of a battering relationship, where the girl is first isolated from family and friends and the adult uses threats and intimidation to control her through emotional, sexual, and physical abuse. He creates an environment of total emotional deprivation and uses violence to establish and maintain power.

  While the relationship between Floyd and Sharon closely mirrored that of a pimp and prostitute, what was unusual was Sharon did not appear to be vulnerable or have low self-esteem, as was typical of girls who generally fell under the spell of a pimp.

  During her high school years Sharon was vivacious, appeared to have a positive, healthy outlook on life, and was upbeat. Only after Sharon left Forest Park High School was her will finally broken. The study did not account for how Sharon found the strength to attempt an escape from Floyd. That attribute, Jones believed, came from Sharon’s own personal strength, a force that drew in Fitzpatrick, who spent the last year of his career focused on Sharon Marshall. It was a personal endeavor supported by his superiors, who virtually looked the other way, knowing how much it meant to the veteran agent.

  Despite Fitzpatrick’s determined and heartfelt efforts, his retirement day approached with little progress in the search for Sharon’s identity.

  Given the time period when she was believed to have been kidnapped, there were simply no records available to continue the search.

  In mid-July Fitzpatrick visited with Mark Yancey and Ed Kumiega to say good-bye. Both men felt for Fitzpatrick, and both appreciated the zeal and effort he had placed into his search.

  Fitzpatrick officially retired from the FBI on July 18, 1998, submitting his papers just two months in advance so as to not give the special agent in charge of the Oklahoma City field office time to talk Fitzpatrick out of leaving the bureau.

  When he left the building that day, Fitzpatrick felt a profound sense of sadness. For the first time during his distinguished career, he was unable to close a case. He left that day still asking himself: Where was Michael Hughes, and who was Sharon Marshall?

  CHAPTER 28

  Franklin Floyd remained in the Atlanta federal prison through 1999, when he was brought to Florida and transferred to the Pinellas County jail.

  The murder indictment slowly worked its way through the courts, and successfully stood against several legal challenges. In 2001, Floyd’s court-appointed attorneys sought to have him declared mentally incompetent to stand trial.

  Assistant Public Defender Jill Menadier told Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Nancy Moate Ley that Floyd had a history of mental problems, including schizophrenia, and throughout his life had undergone psychiatric care.

  Three court-appointed psychologists examined Floyd, and two agreed that Floyd was not competent to stand trial.

  It would be up to Judge Ley to make the final decision.

  The judge had raised her own concerns about Floyd’s competence after she received several letters from Floyd, all rambling thoughts, theories on his life, and the identities of Cheryl Commesso’s “real” killers. One letter was particularly memorable, with Floyd remarking that “I will trudge the last miles to the death house crumpled before the legal system towards the electric chair which awaits me like the mother I once loved.”

  Floyd did not want to be declared incompetent. He actually fought against it.

  Bob Schock and Mark Deasaro didn’t believe for one minute that Floyd was crazy. They visited the federal prison in Atlanta in April 2000, hoping to gain additional insight and information from several inmates whom Floyd had befriended.

  Inmate Kenneth Birchfield told of one of Floyd’s strange hobbies.

  Floyd was described as a “freak” over child-porn magazines. He obtained titles such as Barely Legal and Barely 18 from other inmates, then would cut out the pictures, then the private parts, which he’d place in a photo-type album.

  During prison “shakedowns” some of the albums would be confiscated. Floyd gave others to inmates to hold for safekeeping.

  Floyd wrote to Judge Ley, objecting to any effort to have him declared incompetent, going so far as to request his attorneys be removed and Floyd be allowed to defend himself.

  “No psychiatrist in his right mind would find me incompetent,” wrote Floyd.

  On March 2, 2001, Judge Ley disagreed with Floyd’s assessment and ruled that Floyd was mentally incompetent to stand trial. She ordered Floyd to undergo further mental evaluations.

  Floyd called the ruling “insulting.”

  Prosecutor Bruce Bartlett worried that Floyd would escape from the mental hospital.

  “This guy is no dope,” said Bartlett.

  Two months later, Schock visited with Robert Messina, an inmate at the Pinellas County Jail who spent a month in lock-down solitary confinement in a pod next to Floyd.

  The pods were single cells separated only by iron bars. Inmates could see and talk freely with other inmates, and Floyd apparently talked a lot, and often.

  It was Messina who contacted the State Attorney’s office via letters sent by regular mail, relaying that he had information pertaining to Floyd.

  Messina had been jailed for resisting arrest with violence and was awaiting trial. He had previously been arrested before for resisting arrest.

  Floyd bragged about beating the Commesso murder rap, claiming all the prosecution had was pictures. There was no witness nor did Floyd ever confess. Floyd often spoke about his past, and talked freely about how he kidnapped his son and put him to rest.

  “He said, ‘If I can’t have him, no one would,’” recalled Messina.

  Schock and Deasaro were interested in what Messina had to say next, about how Floyd claimed he dated some of the girls at the Mons Venus, and that he had no problem killing some girl with an Italian-sounding last name.

  “Was her name Commesso?” said Schock.

  “Sounds about right,” said Messina.

  Schock, Deasaro, and Bruce Bartlett all believed that Floyd had toyed with Judge Ley and the psychiatrists who examined him and in July, Judge Ley agreed, reversing her earlier ruling based on subsequent psychiatric evaluations. After watching Floyd over several months, psychiatrists determined that Floyd was competent to stand trial after all.

  More than a year later, on September 9, 2002, Floyd
would finally face the jury.

  Unlike his previous federal trial in Oklahoma City, where Floyd limited his outbursts before Judge Wayne Alley, he battled daily with Judge Ley, arguing and often hurling obscenities.

  On several occasions he was physically removed from the courtroom.

  Floyd was particularly incensed over Ley’s ruling that jurors would know of Floyd’s prior conviction for the Michael Hughes kidnapping.

  “You’ll know I’ll be convicted, so don’t worry about that,” said Floyd sarcastically.

  Floyd’s trial lasted nine days. He wore glasses and a blue prison jumpsuit and each day scribbled furiously into a notebook, alerting his attorneys to his thoughts and questions as witnesses who once knew Floyd as Warren Marshall described his violent temper and uneven demeanor.

  Jennifer Fisher Tanner testified, as did Merle Bean and others involved in the Michael Hughes kidnapping case.

  Cary Strukel, Sharon’s old boyfriend from Tampa, repeated his belief that Floyd was a “nutcase and whack job.”

  Even Joe Fitzpatrick was brought down to testify.

  Fitzpatrick intended to spend his retirement fishing. Instead he was a highly sought private investigator working for several insurance companies. He was busier now than he had been with the FBI. He also spent a considerable amount of time helping Schock and Deasaro as they built their case against Floyd, providing a sounding board for the Florida detectives.

  As the trial continued, Floyd’s attorneys argued that there were no witnesses to the slaying of Cheryl Commesso, and no confession. The most damning evidence were the photos found in the truck in Kansas.

  Floyd claimed the pictures were planted by the FBI, a claim that was rebuked by prosecutors Bruce Bartlett and Glenn Martin, who argued that Floyd took the photos prior to killing Cheryl, then kept the photos to “memorialize” the event, a typical trait of pedophiles and sexual sadists.

  Hand experts also testified that it was, indeed, Floyd’s thumb that appeared in several of the photos.

  Floyd was prone to outbursts throughout the trial, maintaining his innocence as he screamed at the judge and witnesses as they walked by the defense table.

  Floyd’s temper, the overwhelming evidence, and the testimony from those most affected by his past deeds did him in.

  On September 28, 2002, following nine days of testimony, the jury deliberated only four hours before finding Franklin Floyd guilty of murder.

  After the verdict was read, Floyd stood at the defense table and screamed at the jury.

  “Look me in the face!” he cried. “Look me in the face.”

  Floyd then turned to Bartlett and Martin.

  “They framed me,” he yelled. “It was the FBI that put those pictures there. I was framed.”

  The guilty verdict secure, the penalty phase of the trial would begin on October 1, but not before Floyd would explode again with rage, screaming at the judge and jury that he was framed. Floyd also objected to the disclosure of his his 1962 child abuse conviction, which he unsuccessfully fought to keep from the jury during the penalty phase.

  Floyd’s outburst forced Judge Ley to suspend court until the following day, when Floyd calmly took the stand and answered questions for more than an hour, talking about his troubled life as a youth, the alleged sexual abuse at the orphanage, and his brutal years in jail as an adult.

  His newfound serenity did little to sway the jury, which returned after deliberating but one hour. Floyd stood, surrounded by seven bailiffs, and listened solemnly as the jury announced their unanimous decision to recommend Floyd be put to death by lethal injection.

  Floyd said nothing as he was led out of the courthouse and back to his cell at the Pinellas County jail. He remained there until late February 2003, when he was transferred to death row at the maximum-security prison at Raiford.

  On April 9, two weeks before his sixtieth birthday, Floyd was admitted to the prison hospital following what was described as a complete emotional breakdown. He was hospitalized for three weeks, then returned to death row, where he remained in total lockdown.

  Two cars traveled slowly on the thin roads of the Park Grove Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the female drivers searching in different directions for the long-forgotten marker.

  It was spring 2003, a time for renewal. Once-brown grass, dormant through the winter, displayed a fresh green hue.

  The small cemetery was empty of visitors except for the two cars, a red Mustang and blue Ford minivan. Each would stop in front of a marker or tombstone to read a name, then slowly move on again. After ten minutes, the Mustang pulled up in front of one marker, and Karen Parsley jumped out of her car, waving her arms back and forth and calling to Lavernia Watkins in the minivan.

  “It’s here! It’s here!” yelled Karen.

  Lavernia pulled her van behind the Mustang, and walked up to the gravesite just off the road. It was a simple gray marble marker, identified by only one name, Tonya.

  The soft ground in front was bare. It had been some time since anyone had come to visit, much less placed flowers at the site. Karen hadn’t visited since Tonya was buried in 1990. Same for Lavernia.

  The two women still worked at Passions, both giving up dancing for different jobs. Both were mothers with children of their own, and Karen was the day manager while Lavernia worked as a hostess serving drinks. They kept their stage names, Connie for Karen, and Bambi for Lavernia.

  Franklin Floyd’s trial in Florida had been reported in the local papers. His subsequent death sentence, by lethal injection, was too good for him, as far as they were concerned. The electric chair would have been their preferred manner of death. A few minutes of high-voltage electricity passing through his shaking body, with smoke billowing out of his ears and nostrils, still wouldn’t have been enough to pay for the pain he caused their friend and her son. But it would have been far more desirable than lying on a gurney, getting stuck with a needle, and falling asleep forever.

  The two women stood in front of the marker, not quite sure what to do next other than stand there, their presence apparently enough to show their respect.

  “We should have brought flowers,” said Connie.

  “Didn’t think of it,” said Bambi.

  “Looks like no one cares about her,” said Connie, looking down at the marker, a tear running slowly down her cheek.

  “We’re with you, baby,” she whispered. “That bastard’s gonna be gone soon.”

  Connie had hoped that someday the marker would be replaced with another bearing Tonya’s real name, but that day had yet to come. All Connie knew was that the FBI had tried to identify her friend, but Tonya had been taken so long ago, it was deemed an impossible task.

  She knew that Franklin Floyd knew the answer, but he continued to resist, offering different versions to different people, saying Tonya was given to him by her prostitute mother, or by her father, who couldn’t care for her.

  Floyd would never tell the truth, and it appeared the mystery would remain just that.

  Bambi stood there, deep in her own thoughts, while Connie knelt down before the marker.

  “I hope one day we find out who you really were,” she said. “I hope one day I’ll know your real name, and I’ll meet your real family, and I can tell them that I once knew a girl who tried to save herself and her son. And I can tell them I was your friend.”

  EPILOGUE

  Alexandria, Virginia

  February 2003

  Gerry Nance sat in his cubicle on the second floor of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, staring at his computer as he typed out an e-mail.

  The letter was written to Shelley Denman, a Kansas City, Missouri, woman who had spent the last three years searching for three members of her husband’s family who had disappeared in 1974.

  Nance was interested in helping Denman, particularly since two of the missing were children—a four-year-old niece and ten-month-old nephew. Nance had written many similar letters since joining the National Cente
r in December 1998, following twenty-five years of service with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

  The change of careers had not been planned.

  In 1996, Nance was the deputy assistant director for felony criminal investigations for NCIS, investigating major felony crimes, counterintelligence, and espionage. He was in the process of rewriting investigation protocols, focusing at the time on missing-persons reports. He had heard of the National Center, and its stellar work with missing children, and decided to pay a visit to see what information they could offer for his project.

  His tour was life-changing.

  By the end of his visit that day Nance was so taken with the work of the National Center he let it be known that if a position ever became available, he was interested.

  Two years went by, and Nance was working as an advisor to the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office when he received a phone call from Ben Ermini, director of the missing-children’s division. The National Center had received additional funding in its new budget to create and operate a cold-case division, and they were looking for someone to run the new department.

  Nance retired on a Thursday in December 1998, and reported to his new job the following Monday.

  His official title was case manager for special cases, but Nance knew that he’d be working on the coldest of cases, investigations where a child had been missing for at least five years and there was no active participation by police or a family member in finding the child.

  Some cases went back twenty, even thirty years.

  Nance, fifty-six, was a tall, even-tempered, and deliberate man who knew from experience that laying a good foundation—through analysis, programming, fact-finding, and evaluation—was the key to a successful investigation.

  He also knew going in that his new job would be tough, and in some respects impossible. The culture of noncooperation and noncommunication that plagued law enforcement in the U.S. for decades in missing-children investigations was slowly evaporating, as many police agencies welcomed the National Center and its resources. But a good number of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies still maintained the old ways. They refused to cooperate or take advantage of the resources offered by the National Center, holding tightly to their well-entrenched belief that no one enters their jurisdiction, no matter what the circumstances.