Franklin Delano Floyd’s reign of terror over a poor young woman becomes the central story in Netflix’s true crime story, Girl in the Picture. In a crime spree that spanned more than three decades, Floyd’s rap sheet covers everything from sexually assaulting a child and kidnapping to the brutal murder of a strip worker that ultimately put him behind bars forever. Here is the list of crimes that created the horror story we now know him for and where he is now.
Who is Franklin Delano Floyd?
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Franklin Delano Floyd is a serial criminal and convicted pedophile, rapist and murderer.
Born on 17 June 1943, he was the youngest of five children and had a turbulent family life after his father’s death shortly after his first birthday. His mother moved the children into her parents’ home, but the elderly couple found it difficult to accommodate so many children in a small apartment and were asked to leave in 1946.
As a result, Floyd and his siblings were all placed in a children’s home, where it is stated in Matt Birkbeck’s book A Beautiful Child (the basis of Girl in the Picture) that Floyd was mistreated and abused by the other children and those who they took care. for him.
In interviews with Birkbeck, Floyd claimed that on one occasion, his hands were put in hot water when he was caught masturbating.
With fewer confidants and loved ones around, as his brothers and sisters left home when he turned 18, Floyd eventually ran away. He tried to enlist in the army, but was eventually kicked out when he was found to be underage.
Matt Birkbeck in Girl in the Picture
Netflix
He later turned to a life of crime, which had shown his habit in the years following the crime spree.
In 1960, he was shot in the stomach by police after breaking into a department store in an attempt to steal a gun. Emergency surgery managed to save him and he spent a year in a juvenile detention center.
In 1962, when Floyd was 18, he kidnapped a four-year-old girl from a bowling alley and attacked her in a nearby field where she was later found.
He was convicted and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, only to break out a year later during a medical visit away from prison, and rob a bank before being caught again and sent back to prison.
According to Floyd in his interviews with Birkbeck, he was mistreated in prison and regularly assaulted by other inmates in Illinois who knew of his conviction, before he was eventually transferred to Georgia State Prison.
He was released in November 1972 and in January 1973, he was arrested again after sexually assaulting a woman he met at a gas station. A former prison friend helped secure his temporary release by posting his bail, and Floyd went on the run, missing his court hearing in June and becoming a wanted fugitive.
Netflix
After this point Floyd developed a collection of false identities and bounced from state to state to avoid detection, and was largely successful in this endeavor, lying low and being an unassuming member of the communities he found himself in.
While at a church in 1974, now using the name Brandon Williams, he met Sandi Willet, a struggling mother going through her second divorce. Promising to take care of her and her children, they married within two months and moved to Texas.
Sandy had four children under the age of four – Susan, Alison, Amy and a son named Philip. When he was arrested and jailed for 30 days for writing a bad check at a grocery store, Floyd took the children and fled the area.
In The Girl in the Picture, Sandi says that he tried to retrieve her children, but it was not considered abduction as they were married, and therefore considered in his care. She couldn’t find him anymore as he had once again changed his name.
Alison and Amy were quickly placed in a children’s home, with Philip’s whereabouts unknown for the better part of 40 years. At some point during Birkbeck’s investigation, it is believed that Floyd may have killed the baby. However, in 2019, miraculously a man who was adopted as a baby was confirmed to be the missing Philip.
But while her siblings fell into the care of the state, Suzanne Sevarkis would suffer a horror that would last for another 16 years.
Floyd raised her as his own and would constantly abuse her throughout her childhood and adolescence. He would later make her work as a stripper and sex worker to fund his own lifestyle and they would continue to travel the country under different aliases.
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In Girl in the Picture, a friend recalls Floyd raping Suzanne in front of her during a sleepover, before being threatened into silence by him.
For decades in the search to uncover her true identity, Suzanne was best known as Sharon Marshall, although another group of friends knew her as Tonya Hughes.
Floyd also refused to allow Susan to go to university, despite the fact that she was accepted on a full scholarship to Georgia Tech University to study aerospace engineering. She became pregnant soon after and gave birth to baby Michael in 1988.
In April 1990, Suzanne’s body was found on the side of a dirt road in Oklahoma and she died in hospital a few days later. Michael was placed in a foster home, where Floyd made repeated unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the child. DNA testing later revealed that Michael was not biologically his.
Floyd eventually kidnapped Michael from his school in September 1994, holding the principal at gunpoint before stealing his truck. Floyd was later arrested and charged with possession of a weapon despite his felony and kidnapping charges, but Michael was never seen again.
In the resulting investigation, a collection of photographs containing child pornography and graphic depictions of a woman being beaten and abused by Floyd’s stolen truck was recovered. The woman was later identified as Cheryl Commesso, Suzanne’s partner who went missing in 1989.
Her body was found later that year, with the coroner determining the injuries that caused her death were consistent with those seen in the photographs.
Where is Franklin Delano Floyd now?
Netflix
Floyd is now in prison after being sentenced to 52 years for kidnapping baby Michael and the manager. He was further convicted of murdering Cheryl Commesso in November 2002 and sentenced to death. Despite multiple attempts to appeal the conviction, he currently remains on death row in Pinellas County, Florida. However, he has not been convicted of Susanna Sevaki’s murder and has refused to talk about her death. He remains a person of interest. Floyd claimed in 2015 that he murdered baby Michael shortly after the school abduction and gave a rough location of where the body would be found, but police were unable to recover the body. As a result, the case regarding Michael’s death remains open. The Girl in the Picture is now available on Netflix. Buy Netflix eGift Cards Netflix amazon.co.uk Orange is the New Black – Seasons 1-6 £23.05 Star Trek Discovery Season 2 [DVD] [2019] £19.99 The Good Place – Season 3 £9.99 Marriage history £11.24 The Crown – Seasons 1 & 2 £16.47 Star Trek: Discovery – Season 1 £18.99 House of Cards – Season 6 Daredevil – Season 2 £7.68 Grace and Frankie – Seasons 1-2 £13.00 The Irishman £25.99 Black Mirror – Series 3 £10.99 Jessica Jones – Season 1 £9.99 Luke Cage – Season 1 £16.13 Narcos – Seasons 1-3 Netflix/Arrow…
