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
Chapter 1: What happened to Sandra Brandenburg after her release from jail?
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. It's January 1989. Tampa, Florida is decked with old Christmas lights, but the neon sign of the Mons Vena Strip Club shines brightest of all. It's one of Tampa's most lavish clubs.
Chapter 2: Who are Cheryl Comesso and Sharon Marshall?
Professional athletes and musicians are regular clientele. Inside, two dancers, Cheryl Comesso 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.
Chapter 3: What suspicious behavior did Warren exhibit?
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. 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.
Chapter 4: How did Cheryl's actions affect Sharon and her family?
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 pad out her income.
Chapter 5: What happened to Cheryl after her confrontation with Warren?
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, and 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 lets 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 an 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 ten 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 Camesso 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.
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 coworkers, Karen. A doctor pulls Karen aside and tells her, this was no car accident.
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Chapter 6: What led to the investigation of Tanya Hughes's death?
Over the next couple of 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 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' 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. And 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, a.k.a. 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.
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Chapter 7: What is the connection between Franklin Delano Floyd and the murders?
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, a.k.a. 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 Savakis, because Floyd kept her. From the time she was six years old, Floyd and Suzanne bounced around the country living under various pseudonyms.
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Chapter 8: How did Floyd's past crimes influence the investigation?
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 Mons 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 we'll 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 Sivakis, 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 Karis Allen and Andrew Kelleher, researched by Mickey Taylor, fact-checked by Bennett Logan and Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Janice Morgan.
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