Popular Netflix documentary about a killer, kidnapper has Louisville link

For years after Franklin Delano Floyd's 1994 arrest in Louisville for kidnapping a 6-year-old boy at gunpoint from an Oklahoma elementary, the child's whereabouts remained part of the mystery swirling around the case.

What happened to him? Who was the mother of Michael Anthony Hughes, the boy Floyd falsely claimed was his son?

How did Floyd end up with the child's mother, the woman he called Tonya Hughes, whom he at first passed off as his daughter and later, his wife? What led up to her 1990 death in an unsolved hit-and-run accident?

Now, as Floyd, 79, sits on death row in Florida after his 2002 conviction for killing a Florida woman, Netflix has released a popular documentary, "Girl in the Picture", that shows how investigators resolved many of those questions as they traced Floyd's  decades-long trail of crime and false identities around the United States.

Described by Netflix as a "mystery that unfolds like a nightmare," it is the most popular item on the movie-streaming service since its release July 6, according to HuffPost.

It follows the trail of violence and subterfuge left by Floyd, a trail that ended in Louisville in 1994 after he was arrested by the FBI. He had been living alone for about six weeks in an apartment on East Broadway and had just landed a job as a car salesman.

At the time, he was being sought for the crime of abducting the child from school, leaving the school principal handcuffed to a tree and fleeing in the principal's pickup — a crime featured on the TV show "America's Most Wanted."

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Floyd, at the time of his arrest, claimed to know nothing about the condition of the boy he continued to falsely claim was his son, despite a custody finding in Oklahoma that he was not the father.

"I did not kidnap my son," he said, according to a Courier Journal report on his court appearance. "I want the record to show that if they (the FBI) know where he is, they need to recover him and get it straight."

Floyd was later convicted of kidnapping in federal court in Oklahoma, where he was returned after his arrest in Louisville.

The boy was never found, and it wasn't until 2014, after Floyd had been sent to death row in a separate case, that he filled in missing details about the child and his mother in a series of interviews with FBI agents, according to an FBI report on cold cases.

Floyd told agents he grew irritated with the boy as they were driving out of Oklahoma and shot Michael in the head on the same day he kidnapped him.

According to the FBI account, Agent Scott Lobb remembers the moment Floyd confessed. “He turned and looked at me and said, ‘I shot him twice in the back of the head to make it real quick.’”

Why did Floyd finally confess? “I think he just ran out of excuses,” Lobb said.

Floyd claimed he buried the child's body near an interstate exit in Oklahoma, but the remains were never found.

He also, in the same interview, acknowledged he had abducted as a young girl the woman he later claimed was his wife, Tonya Hughes. He kidnapped her after the girl's mother, whom he had married, was jailed in Texas.

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Floyd said he took the girl and moved to Oklahoma City, according to the FBI account. The girl's real name was Suzanne Marie Sevakis, and she was the one found lying alongside an Oklahoma City highway, critically injured from an apparent vehicle hit-and-run while she was walking back from a grocery to the motel where she stayed with Floyd.

Floyd was questioned but never charged with her death.

“That’s the one thing Floyd won’t talk about,” Lobb, the agent who interviewed him, said.

Floyd remains on death row for the murder of Cheryl Comesso, a Florida woman who disappeared in 1989 at age 18. Floyd was convicted after her remains were found in 1995 and further evidence linked him to the death.

No execution date has been set.

Reach Deborah Yetter at dyetter@courier-journal.com. Find her on Twitter at @d_yetter. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/subscribe. 

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Netflix Girl in the Picture revives tale of killer's Louisville arrest