94. The Abductions of Franklin Delano Floyd
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You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I am your host Peyton Moreland and oh my gosh it is Halloween week! Woo!

If you're not watching on YouTube, I am dressed up as a bat. Okay. My favorite animal is a bat. I love bats and I really wanted to be a bat and I wanted to dress up for Into the Dark. So if you are just listening and want to go check it out, you can go check out the YouTube. Just type it Into the Dark podcast and see my bat outfit. Maybe I'll post a picture on Instagram too if you want to follow there. But yeah, I

I'm just, I love Halloween, obviously, as you know, and I'm so, so excited for this week. All right, before I get into my 10 seconds, I just wanted to say hi to everyone who is new here. If you listened over on Murder With My Husband and now you are checking out Into The Dark, welcome. This community is so fun over here and I'm so excited to have you. It really is

basically murder with my husband minus Garrett plus we do get into some spooky stuff uh but honestly really it's good okay it's good and we are happy that you are here thank you for coming over and thank you for supporting okay so for my 10 seconds I was just going to talk about the Halloween party that Garrett and I had two days ago we dressed up as um little devils well we dressed up as the devil wears Prada um and we wore Prada with little devil horns and stuff but

besides that, the party was so fun. I went all out on decoration, like everything I could think of. Honestly, I didn't even really care if people showed up. I was just so happy that my house looks so spooky. We had a palm reader. We had a tattoo artist. We had scary movie playing. And then we had like a spread of a

a charcuterie board that was all spooky themed we had a spooky cake we had spooky cookies that were like ouija boards and skeletons and it was just honestly so fun I love Halloween and yeah I hope all of you guys have a good Halloween if you're trick-or-treating I hope you have fun trick-or-treating if you're staying home and passing out candy or if you're going to a party okay

Okay, I hope you have a good Halloween. But that being said, let's get into the episode. Now, a quick trigger warning. This episode includes discussions of domestic abuse and sexual assault, including the sexual assault of a minor. So please listen with care. Now, all too often when it comes to true crime, we focus on murder. It's hard to imagine anything worse than taking away someone's life.

But occasionally, you'll come across a story where someone treats their victim horribly without actually killing them. And it's difficult to imagine just how depraved some people can be and how much it's possible to survive.

But I do want to warn you, today's case is especially dark and parts of it are going to be difficult to hear. Now the case begins with a woman named Sandra Willett. In 1975, she was in a pretty tough situation in her life. Sandra had been divorced twice and was now trying to raise her four children all on her own. Sandra's oldest son,

oldest daughter was named Suzanne Savoskis and she was the only child from her first marriage to a man named Cliff Savoskis. Now the other three had been with her second husband so one child with her first husband Cliff who is Suzanne and then the other three with her next husband.

So one day when Sandra was at a church event, she met a man who introduced himself as Brandon Cleo Williams. Now, Sandra didn't realize it, but the man had actually given her a fake name while at church. He was a wanted criminal who was on the run. And his real name was Franklin Delano Floyd. And Franklin's rap sheet was very long.

and very disturbing. He had already been charged or convicted of multiple counts of robbery, kidnapping, and the sexual assault of a young child. But the reason he was on the run now was because he had violated parole. So,

Anyway, as we know at church, when Sandra meets Franklin, she has no idea about his background or that he is lying to her. And she also didn't think she had any reason to mistrust him. So Sandra lets Franklin into her life and she even lets him adopt her four children and raise them as their stepfather.

Well, sadly, at some point after Franklin got involved with her family, Sandra was arrested for writing a bad check. And while she was behind bars, Franklin put her three youngest children up for adoption because technically,

He is their caretaker now because he's adopted them. I mean, take a moment to let that sink in. Sandra, who wrote a bad check, was going to get out of jail after just a month. This was not a super long sentence.

But Franklin apparently just couldn't wait those five weeks or so for her to come back. So instead, he sent her children off into the system without her permission. And it was all because he was their legal stepfather. And I want you to keep in mind that Suzanne's children are really young. She has four and the oldest child is five. And it's Suzanne.

So Franklin keeps five-year-old Suzanne. He doesn't put her up for adoption with the rest of her siblings. And specifically, he kept her and then skipped town with her. So when Sandra got out of jail, she found it almost impossible to track Franklin or Suzanne down.

And these were the days before social media or Google searches. According to Sandra, she didn't even know where to start when it came to finding her missing daughter. And you may be thinking,

Where was Suzanne's biological father in all of this? Well, it's important to remember that Cliff was very young when Suzanne was born and he was still young when Franklin abducted her. He was 23 years old, broke and unemployed and really struggling with his mental health at the time. So he understood that Suzanne wasn't in a safe situation, but he also didn't feel like he was in a position to help her.

So Cliff and Sandra both gave up the search fairly quickly, which meant that Franklin got away with this child. Now, once this all came to light years later, I mean, I'm sure is how you're feeling. The two of them faced a lot of criticism for their decision making, for letting their daughter basically be taken by this man.

Tons of people thought that Sandra and Cliff could have done more to find Suzanne and bring her home. And I will say, we can't really know what's going on in someone else's life. I am not in a position to say if Sandra or Cliff really could have gotten their daughter back or done more for her. But I am sad to say that Suzanne was never reunited with her parents and it is her parents' responsibility to take care of her.

Suzanne spent the rest of her life with Franklin, and since she was only about five years old at the time of the abduction, it's likely she didn't even understand what was happening to her. So needless to say, Suzanne did not have a stable or happy life growing up as Franklin's abducted daughter.

He was incredibly controlling of her. Suzanne basically wasn't allowed to have friends and whenever they'd move to a new school and she'd meet her new classmates, she was forbidden from sharing their phone number. And if someone did manage to look up Suzanne's contact information and give her a call anyway, Franklin would fly into a rage. And speaking of changing schools, Franklin

and Suzanne had to move around a lot and they also used fake names so it would be harder for the police to track them down.

At different times, Suzanne, who was having this happen as a child, just remember that, went by Sharon Marshall, Tonya Hughes, and countless other identities. Franklin posed as a man named Trenton B. Davis and Kingfish Floyd, among others. And they didn't just come up with these names on their own. They actually stole them from gravestones, like a low-tech version of identity theft.

From the sound of it, by the time she was a teenager, Suzanne didn't even know her real name anymore. That wasn't the worst that she had to deal with in Franklin's care because Franklin sexually assaulted Suzanne repeatedly. And the saddest account may have come from Suzanne's friend from high school, a girl named Jennifer Fisher. Jennifer was like a lifeline to Suzanne while she was living in a town called Forest Park, Georgia.

Jennifer helped Suzanne feel like a normal teenage girl. Jennifer memorized Franklin's schedule, knew when he'd be out of the house, and then she'd call Suzanne to talk on the phone when it was safe to do so. She came over a lot to have girl time too. And one time, Suzanne visited Jennifer's house, and that's when she tried broccoli for the first time in her entire life.

She was a high school student and she literally never tasted it before. Now, apparently, Franklin wasn't big on making sure that she got plenty of vegetables. And when she finally tried broccoli, she absolutely loved it. So Jennifer was literally giving her a chance to live an ordinary life as much as was possible. So one night, Suzanne invited Jennifer to sleep over and Jennifer got permission from her mom and then went to Suzanne's house. But right away, things got weird.

First, while they were changing into their pajamas, Suzanne showed Jennifer some nightgowns that wouldn't exactly be comfortable to sleep in, in high school especially. They were actually sexy, revealing lingerie. And Suzanne told Jennifer that this was all a gift from her dad.

And at that point, Jennifer knew right away that this was a very strange gift for a father to give his high school daughter. And while this conversation was going on, Franklin actually entered the girl's room and he came in with a gun. So Jennifer screamed and tried to cover herself up because remember she was changing. She didn't have any clothes on.

Well, apparently Franklin thought it was hilarious that he'd scared the girls while they were getting dressed because this was all a joke to him. He laughed and then walked out of the room. So it's needless to say at this point that Jennifer is feeling very freaked out at her friend's house. But Suzanne kind of shrugged it off. She was like, it's just my dad. This behavior really didn't even register to her as that odd.

So later on that night, Franklin came into the room again. He still has the gun with him. And this time he orders Jennifer, the friend, to lay down on the floor and cover her face with a pillow. And remember, he has a gun. She's at her friend's house. This is her dad. She's already feeling a little weird. So she just lays down and does what she's told. And she couldn't see what happened next, but she could tell what was going on based on what she heard. Franklin was sexually assaulting his daughter,

While Jennifer laid in the room and listened. And just like the previous incident with the gun, Suzanne acted like this assault was really no big deal afterward. In the morning when they were making breakfast, she tells her friend Jennifer, quote, daddy's just like that.

It's so sad to think that this was the only life Suzanne had ever known. She thought that this was something she could just explain away as a quirk of her father's personality. Now, the good news was that as her 18th birthday was coming up, Suzanne had something to look forward to. She thought that as soon as she graduated high school, she would be able to leave home and head off to college. She thought that as soon as she graduated high school,

She was a great student who got all A's and B's. She had an IQ of 132 and she was especially strong with math and geometry. And on top of that, Suzanne did keep busy with lots of extracurricular activities like student council, prom committee, future business leaders and more. And all of that hard work paid off in March of 1986 when she actually got an acceptance letter in the mail. She'd made it into her top choice school and that was Georgia Tech.

Now, sadly, not long after she got the acceptance letter, Suzanne learned something that would crush her dreams. She was pregnant. And even though she ended up putting the baby up for adoption, she still felt like she had to put her college dreams on hold. She told her friends it was just for a year and then she'd go to school once she recovered from the pregnancy and birth. Except not long after the baby was born, she and her father moved out of town.

And although she stayed in touch with Jennifer, she was beyond helping and she never made her college dreams come true. See, they moved and Suzanne and Franklin changed their names and adopted new identities again, still trying to stay one step ahead of the law. And even more alarming, once they were using new pseudonyms,

Franklin actually stopped posing as Suzanne's father in this new place that they moved. He told her and everyone that they would now be introducing themselves as husband and wife. It's important to remember that Suzanne had been very young when she was kidnapped. And it's entirely possible, even probable, that she believed Franklin was her biological father.

But their whole relationship had been so warped for her entire life that as near as I can tell, she actually went along with this new arrangement. Do you guys know that solving mysteries keeps me on my toes? But staying fit?

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quince.com/dark. By now, she and Franklin were living in Tulsa, Oklahoma as husband and wife, even though he had raised her since she was five.

And Franklin either refused to work or couldn't find a job. So it was Suzanne's responsibility to now support the both of them. So she made money by dancing and it paid well. And Suzanne got along with the other dancers. So it wasn't a bad setup. It also let her stay home during the day, which was important because she got pregnant again and had another baby. And this time she kept it.

His name was Michael. He was born on April 21st, 1988. And Suzanne absolutely doted on him. Michael was the light of her life. And she was willing to put up with so much mistreatment just to be near him. Because Suzanne knew that if she ever tried to get away from Franklin, there was a risk that she might lose her son in the custody dispute because now Franklin did lose

legally have a tie to her. So at this point, Suzanne felt like she could never escape.

Even as Franklin's behavior grew more and more alarming. For example, one night a friend of the family came over and everyone was watching wrestling on the television and Franklin offered to tape it so they could rewatch the match later if they wanted. So he put a VHS tape in only instead of recording the show, it began to play what was already recorded on the VHS tape.

And it was a home video of Suzanne and a friend of hers, Cheryl, who were on the beach.

And they were topless. So as soon as Franklin realized that he'd accidentally begun playing this homemade dirty movie of his own daughter and her friend, he rushed to turn it off. And he warned the visitor that she shouldn't say anything to anyone and she needed to keep her mouth shut. Now, I think it's important to say that so many people got the sense that something was not right with Suzanne and Franklin. But nobody intervened. And sadly, Suzanne was trapped.

Franklin was still incredibly controlling, enough that the other women at the strip club could tell that their relationship was extremely toxic. He forced Suzanne to get breast implants. Suzanne agreed to the surgery, even though she didn't want it. And afterward, she was clearly unhappy with her body. But Franklin frequently bragged to his friends about how big his wife's new breasts were. And one by one, Suzanne's coworkers pulled her aside to tell her, hey,

"We think you should leave your husband." Some of them even offered to set her up on dates with other men. They seem to think that if she just had a little affair, she would realize the other options she had. And that might be the nudge that she needed to leave Franklin. Not that Suzanne had a lot of time to sneak around or have flings. Franklin pressured her always to make more and more money. And it seemed like she was always at the club. And occasionally she would even fall asleep when she was supposed to be performing for clients.

And even worse, Suzanne began approaching customers under this pressure of making more money and offering to have sex with them for cash. And she explained to her coworkers that Franklin had given her this idea. He pressured her into this. He didn't think she was making enough money as just a dancer. And Suzanne apparently didn't feel like she could say no to him. I mean, this was her whole life being used by her father or the man she believed was her father in almost every single way.

I think it's needless to say that Suzanne's life was tragic, and it all came to an even more tragic end in April of 1990.

See, just after midnight on a rainy night, a driver reported to the police that he had spotted a woman lying face down on the edge of a road in Oklahoma City. The driver thought she was dead. But when an ambulance arrived, they realized the woman, who I'm just going to tell you is Suzanne, was still alive. She was badly hurt, though. The assumption was that she must have been walking near the street when a car ran her over and then drove off, leaving her for dead.

Now, once Suzanne made it to the hospital, it was only a matter of time before Franklin would be notified and rushed to her side. And he told the doctors that he was Suzanne's husband and he wanted to be with her through the recovery. And the whole time he sat in the room with her and Suzanne kept repeating over and over, daddy, daddy, daddy. And I have to imagine that the doctors had no idea that she was calling out for Franklin, the man who had introduced himself to them as her husband.

But just like his usual self, Franklin was controlling and he tried to stop other visitors from seeing Suzanne at all. However, as Suzanne began to recover, she became well enough to speak up for herself.

And she told the doctors she wanted to see her friends, the people who were trying to visit. And that's when the dancers from her work began dropping by to check in on her and catch up on gossip. And during these visits, they told the doctors and nurses some disturbing things. Her friends did. Like they thought that, hey, we're pretty sure Suzanne's husband is abusive. And they also said that Suzanne had been planning to leave him and they believed you

He was willing to do anything to stop her. So keep in mind at this time, the police did not know who the driver was that had allegedly hit her and left her for dead. And now the people who knew Suzanne the best were heavily implying that they believe Franklin may be violent and they think he may be the driver who hit her. So maybe it wasn't an accident.

Now, this was all very concerning, but the doctors had other priorities, namely saving Suzanne's life. Even though she felt better as the days went on, her injuries were still very serious. And eventually, she took a turn for the worse. Suzanne died in the hospital without anyone learning her real identity, and she likely didn't even know it for herself.

She also never had the chance to tell anyone about the horrors that she'd been living through. But the doctors soon had a sense of them anyway, because when they performed an autopsy after she died, they found an abundance of evidence of old injuries from before the hit and run. Signs that Suzanne had suffered terrible abuse throughout her life.

And sadly, even with all of that evidence, Franklin collected a sizable life insurance payment that he had taken out on Suzanne. He also now had full custody of their son, Michael, because so far as anyone knew, he was Michael's only living relative and his father.

Now, we already know that Franklin wasn't a great father based on how he treated Suzanne. But something was different with Michael. People noticed the warning signs right away and they weren't willing to look the other way anymore. The same day that Suzanne died, one of her coworkers told a doctor that Michael wasn't safe and he wasn't doing well. And not just in the way you'd expect for a two-year-old who had just lost his mother.

There were signs that he might have been abused and neglected. The tip was enough to get Child Protective Services involved, and they temporarily removed Michael from Franklin's care and put him in a foster home.

Before long, the Foster family filed a request to permanently adopt Michael. And after this, a huge legal battle ensued. Franklin fought tooth and nail to get Michael back into his care. He argued that as Michael's father, he had every right to raise his son as he saw fit. And the state was completely in the wrong to take him away.

Now, on the other hand, Michael's foster parents were seeing a lot of new signs that he was psychologically disturbed and they didn't know exactly what had happened to him in Franklin's care, but they were not willing to give him back.

And as part of the legal back and forth, Franklin agreed to take a DNA test in July of 1992. And by this time, Michael was four years old and Franklin had been fighting for custody for about two years. And he was probably willing to do anything to finally get his son back, except those DNA tests came back with pretty surprising results.

Michael was not biologically related to Franklin, which means Suzanne had conceived him with someone else, someone who still hasn't been identified even to this day. But since Franklin clearly was not Michael's real father, it became much harder for him to claim that he had any custody rights.

Except, Franklin was clearly not okay with losing access to his son, or at least the boy that he had been raising as a son. At least once, Michael's foster family caught Franklin lurking outside their house, and they also found a makeshift campsite on the edge of the property, as though Franklin had been stalking Michael and maybe planning to kidnap him.

Now, on September 12th, 1994, at 9 a.m., Franklin marched into the Oklahoma Elementary School that a now five-year-old Michael attended. He walked into the school's office, got the attention of Principal James Davis, and then pulled out a gun. He said he needed to see his son right away.

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You heard me, free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash dark. That's wildgrain.com slash dark, or you can use promo code dark at checkout. Now, James did his best to stay calm and talk Franklin down, but Franklin wasn't having it. He just kept insisting that he needed to see Michael. So finally, Franklin walked James down a hallway at gunpoint and James led him to Michael's classroom.

Franklin stood outside the door and told James to pretend that everything was okay. He just had to ask Michael to step out of the classroom for a second. So Principal James got the boy and then the three of them walked back to the office where James told his co-workers that he had to leave the school for a little bit. Now again, Franklin waited outside and nobody saw that he was armed. All three of them, Michael, Franklin, and Principal James finally went out to the parking lot and climbed into James's truck and then they drove off.

Now, the worst part was that James had done such a good job of acting calm during the kidnapping that none of his coworkers even realized anything was wrong. And it took two hours before anyone had the thought to call the police. But I think it's important to note that it wasn't anyone from the school who made the emergency call.

It was around mid-morning when someone heard a man shouting for help in the woods, and it was James. They found him with his arms handcuffed around a tree. His mouth had been duct taped shut, but he managed to get loose for long enough to get their attention. Now, of course, he tells the Good Samaritans everything that happened, and they called the police, and finally the authorities learned about the kidnapping. So the next step was to find Franklin and Michael, but it took more than a month.

before the investigators finally tracked Franklin down. It was October 22nd, 1994, and a tipster recognized the principal's truck parked in Dallas, Texas. Now, after a little investigation, the police confirmed that Franklin had driven the truck to the city and he was still living in Dallas, working as a used car salesman.

but they didn't want to just swoop in and arrest him right away they didn't even know if michael was in any danger and they didn't want franklin to do anything rash if they knew that the police were closing in so they set up a sting operation one agent went to the used car lot with a package that was allegedly for franklin he said he couldn't deliver it until franklin confirmed his identity and once franklin proved that he was the one the police wanted a whole team swooped in and took him into custody

Finally, it was November 9th, almost two full months since the kidnapping. But when the police searched Franklin's home and office, Michael was nowhere to be found. There was no sign that he'd been living with Franklin and also no evidence of where he could be. So when the police took Franklin in for questioning, they had one major question for him. Where was Michael and what had happened to him?

At first, Franklin played innocent, even in the face of all the evidence against him. But eventually, and it did take a long time, he made a confession. Franklin said that he'd taken Michael to a motel one night and they were taking a bath together. And while they were in the water, Franklin asked him, Michael, do you love me? And according to him, the child said no. And that answer made him so angry that Franklin pushed Michael's head under the water and held it there until he died.

And then he dumped the body in a creek and he told the police where to find Michael's remains. But by the time he shared this information, too much time had passed. To this day, Michael's body has never been recovered and he's never gotten a proper burial. Either way, Franklin had confessed to murder and that wasn't the only homicide that he was ultimately linked to.

See, after the police recovered the principal's truck, the one Franklin had stolen, it was auctioned off. And a little while later, the person who bought the truck had taken it in to be serviced. And when a mechanic was working under the hood, they found something very disturbing taped to the gas tank. It was an envelope.

And in it contained 100 photographs, many of which showed children in inappropriate sexual situations. There were also a bunch of photos of a woman who was tied up and had visible injuries all over her body. I mean, severe injuries, kinds that aren't survivable.

It was as though someone had kidnapped this woman and killed her and documented the entire process on camera. Now, the police identified the woman in the photos as Cheryl Camesso. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because I already mentioned Cheryl earlier this episode. Remember, it was when the family friends saw the video of the two topless women on the beach together.

And she knew one was Suzanne and the other was Suzanne's friend, Cheryl. The two of them were friends. They danced at the same club. So Franklin had filmed her without her clothes on. And now he had photos of her being beaten and possibly murdered.

In fact, Cheryl's remains were actually found on March 29th, 1995. She was badly decomposed and all that the police could recover were a skull, a pair of breast implants, and bits of a swimsuit and a pair of pants that had been cut up. Now when the investigators looked inside the skull, they saw bullet fragments. So clearly she hadn't died in an accident or of natural causes. She had been shot, murdered.

And there was another connection between Cheryl and Franklin. It actually briefly dated, sort of. But when Cheryl and Suzanne were both working as dancers at the same club, Franklin had told Cheryl that he had contacts in the adult film industry. And it was actually a dream of Cheryl's to transition from dancing to making movies. So when Franklin told Cheryl he could get her a role if she slept with him, she did it.

Later, she found out that Franklin had been lying. He didn't know anyone in the film industry and he couldn't help Cheryl with her career. So she confronted him about how he'd manipulated her and she also broke things off with him. Now, a week later, she vanished without a trace. All of this to say that Franklin had motive, he had the means and opportunity, and he now had evidence that was left in a truck that he stole that basically linked him to her murder.

So with all of this evidence, Franklin was charged with two murders, Michael's and Cheryl's. And Michael's trial was first in 2002 and Cheryl's was in September of that same year. And during Cheryl's trial, Franklin acted very unstable. He went on long deranged rants where he shared a bizarre tinfoil tales with the judge.

Among other things, he claimed that a famous director of the FBI was his father. He also had a number of emotional outbursts that were serious enough that he had to be forcefully removed from the courtroom during his trial. Needless to say, he did not come across as credible. Franklin was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to death. He was never charged for

for Suzanne's hit and run collision. I'm guessing it's because his mental health was clearly deteriorating by this time. And it's not like anyone could give him a sentence more severe than the execution he was already facing. Not that Franklin was going to take his ruling lying down. He filed for multiple appeals over the course of several years, but none of them were successful and his death sentence stood. Now that might sound like the end of the story, but there was still more to it. And to explain the last part,

I actually have to go back to the beginning, to when Franklin kidnapped Suzanne when she was five years old. She most likely never knew her real name or where she came from. And when Franklin's crimes came to light and when Michael's DNA tests showed that the two of them weren't related, people also learned that Suzanne was not his biological daughter.

But they still didn't know who she actually was. And when she was buried, her gravestone just said Tonya. That was the name that she was going by. And they didn't include a last name because they just didn't know what to put. And the mystery wasn't solved until 2014. You'll remember that Suzanne had a child in high school, which she put up for adoption. And she also had other children, too, that she wasn't able to keep besides that one.

So finally in 2014, one of Suzanne's adopted children was able to provide a DNA sample and solve the mystery. Decades after her abduction and 20 years after her death, Suzanne's blood relatives finally learned what had become of her. And nine years after that, in January of 2023, 79-year-old Franklin died in prison of natural causes.

So he still managed to avoid an execution, but he also never got to live as a free man again. And the really tragic part of this story is that Franklin made everyone around him miserable for his entire life. At least two people died at his hands, Michael and Cheryl, both of whom had their day in court. And then there's Suzanne, who never got justice.

But even if Franklin somehow didn't murder Suzanne, he did take her from her family, abuse her, assault her, and destroy any sense of normalcy she had. It was a cruel and vicious life, and it's something that can never be made right. And that is the story of Suzanne, Michael, and Cheryl.

It's absolutely devastating. And I think there's nothing more devastating than a child who was never really given a fair shot at life. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode and please keep the victims in your mind throughout the day. I will see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye.