Michael Hughes’ disappearance is part of a deeply disturbing story involving a missing mother, multiple identities, years of unanswered questions, and a man whose criminal history stretched back decades.
At the center of the case was Franklin Delano Floyd.
Long before Michael disappeared, Floyd had become involved with Suzanne Sevakis and her family. In the 1970s, he married Suzanne’s biological mother in North Carolina while using an assumed identity.
Suzanne’s mother already had four children from a previous marriage—three daughters and a baby boy. In 1975, she spent a short period incarcerated in Dallas, Texas. When she was released, she discovered that Floyd and the children were gone.
Two of the girls were eventually located at a children’s home, but Suzanne and her infant brother were nowhere to be found.
Authorities did not initially treat the situation as a kidnapping. Because Floyd was considered the children’s stepfather, police believed he had the legal ability to take them. As a result, Suzanne and her brother were never formally listed as missing children.
Later that year, Floyd and Suzanne resurfaced in Oklahoma City. Suzanne was enrolled in school under the name Suzanne Davis.
She eventually graduated from high school in Forest Park, Georgia, in 1986. Investigators later determined that she moved to Phoenix, Arizona, that same year and began using another identity: Sharon Marshall.
Her life continued under assumed names, making it increasingly difficult for authorities to establish who she really was.
Michael Is Born
On March 21, 1988, Suzanne gave birth to a son in Tampa, Florida.
The child was named Michael, although his birth records listed his mother under yet another name: Tonya Dawn Tadlock.
Floyd was also using aliases during this period, including Charles Hughes and Clarence Marcus Hughes. Authorities later believed that this helped explain why Michael was given the surname Hughes.
In 1989, Floyd and Michael’s mother were married in New Orleans. The marriage records listed them as Tonya Tadlock and Clarence Hughes.
By 1990, both were reportedly wanted in connection with a homicide investigation in Florida.
But before authorities could take action, Suzanne was killed in a suspicious hit-and-run in Oklahoma City in April 1990.
Floyd became the primary suspect in her death.
At the time, investigators did not even know the true identity of the woman who had been killed.
It would take another 24 years before the mystery surrounding her identity was finally solved.
Michael Enters Foster Care
After his mother’s death, two-year-old Michael was placed into foster care in Oklahoma.
He was taken in by Merle and Ernest Bean, who cared for him for nearly four years.
According to the foster parents, Michael experienced significant difficulties when he first arrived. He had limited muscle control, did not speak, and sometimes reacted with extreme distress.
Over time, however, the little boy began making remarkable progress.
The Beans eventually started the process of adopting him.
Floyd attempted to regain custody of Michael, claiming that he was the boy’s biological father and accusing the foster parents of mistreating him.
A blood test proved otherwise.
Floyd was not Michael’s biological father, and his attempt to regain custody failed.
That did not end his interest in the child.
Floyd’s Dark Past
Following Suzanne’s death, investigators began looking more closely at Floyd’s background.
What they discovered was a long history of criminal behavior.
Floyd had first been arrested in 1960, when he was only 17, following a gunfight with law enforcement during a burglary. Two years later, he was convicted of abducting and raping a young girl.
Over the years, he used numerous identities, including Trenton Davis, Warren Judson Marshall, Preston Morgan, Kingfish Floyd, Charles Hughes, and Clarence Marcus Hughes.
A search of Floyd’s truck produced particularly disturbing evidence. Investigators found photographs of Suzanne dating from her childhood through her teenage years, including sexually explicit images. Other material involving young women and girls was also discovered.
The evidence deepened investigators’ concerns about Floyd and his relationship with Suzanne.
But there was still no clear answer about what had happened to her.
And then Michael disappeared.
The 1994 Kidnapping
On September 12, 1994, Michael was attending Indian Meridian Elementary School in Choctaw, Oklahoma.
Floyd arrived at the school armed with a gun.
He forced the principal and Michael into the principal’s pickup truck before taking them to a nearby field. There, Floyd restrained the principal to a tree and drove away with Michael.
The principal was eventually rescued and was not physically injured.
Michael, however, vanished.
He was only six years old.
About a month later, the stolen pickup truck was discovered in Dallas, Texas.
But there was no sign of Michael.
Because of confidentiality rules surrounding foster children, the Beans initially could not publicly discuss what had happened. It was only after the FBI appealed to the public for information that they were able to speak openly about Michael’s disappearance.
For the family, the nightmare had begun all over again.
Floyd Is Captured
Approximately two months after Michael disappeared, authorities arrested Floyd in Kentucky.
But Floyd refused to tell investigators where the child was.
Instead, he claimed that Michael had been taken somewhere safe.
Floyd was eventually convicted of kidnapping Michael and sentenced to 52 years in prison.
Even after his conviction, he continued giving different possibilities about Michael’s whereabouts. At various times, he claimed the boy could be outside the United States or living around Atlanta, Georgia, or Kansas City, Missouri.
Investigators, however, had received statements from people who said Floyd had made much darker claims.
Some witnesses alleged that Floyd had admitted killing Michael.
One account stated that Floyd told his sister he had killed the boy in a Georgia motel in 1994. Another person claimed Floyd had described the same method of killing.
There was also a report from someone who said they had seen Floyd bury Michael’s body in a cemetery.
With Floyd’s criminal history and the allegations surrounding his statements, investigators increasingly believed that Michael had been murdered.
Yet no body was found.
Another Murder Charge
While Floyd was already imprisoned for Michael’s kidnapping, investigators continued examining another unsolved case connected to Suzanne.
In 1995, Floyd was charged with the 1989 murder of Cheryl Ann Commesso, a teenage exotic dancer who had reportedly known and worked with Suzanne.
Commesso’s body had been discovered beside Interstate 275 and remained unidentified for six years.
Floyd’s own history also became part of the proceedings. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was initially considered incompetent to stand trial. He later regained competency while being treated in a state mental hospital.
During the trial, his attorneys presented evidence about Floyd’s troubled childhood, including his experiences in an orphanage.
Despite his continued denial of responsibility for Commesso’s murder, Floyd was convicted and sentenced to death in Florida.
He remained on death row while questions about Michael and Suzanne continued to surround him.
Suzanne’s Identity Is Finally Discovered
For more than two decades after her death, the woman known to authorities as Tonya Tadlock remained unidentified.
That changed in 2014.
While speaking with investigators from prison, Floyd discussed his past and mentioned his marriage to Suzanne’s mother.
FBI agents followed the lead and contacted Suzanne’s mother.
She recognized a photograph of the missing girl as her daughter.
DNA testing later confirmed the identification.
The woman killed in Oklahoma City in 1990 was Suzanne Sevakis.
She had been missing since childhood, yet the truth about her identity had remained hidden for approximately 24 years after her death.
For Michael’s case, the discovery finally gave investigators a name for the mother whose disappearance had been connected to his own life.
But it still did not reveal where Michael was.
Floyd’s Final Account
In September 2014, FBI agents interviewed Floyd on death row.
During that interview, Floyd reportedly admitted that he had killed Michael.
According to his account, he had intended to raise the boy himself. But Michael had spent several years with the Beans and, according to Floyd, had become distant from him.
Floyd claimed that during a trip toward Dallas, Michael became difficult to control. He said he eventually shot the child and later disposed of his body near Interstate 35, close to the Oklahoma-Texas border.
Floyd reportedly expressed little remorse when describing what he said had happened.
Investigators searched the area in March 2015.
They found nothing that could establish Michael’s whereabouts.
The search ended without the evidence authorities had hoped to find.
Michael’s body has never been recovered.
A Family Still Waiting
There was eventually one piece of good news connected to Suzanne’s family.
Suzanne’s missing baby brother, who had disappeared with her in 1975, was found alive in 2019.
He had been adopted in North Carolina shortly after disappearing and had spent decades living under a different identity.
His discovery answered one part of a mystery that had remained unsolved for generations.
Michael’s story, however, remains unfinished.
He disappeared from his school in Choctaw, Oklahoma, on September 12, 1994.
He was six years old.
Despite years of investigation, numerous allegations, searches and statements attributed to Franklin Delano Floyd, Michael’s remains have never been located.
The circumstances surrounding his presumed death remain deeply disturbing, but without the recovery of his body, many questions remain unanswered.
More than three decades after Michael was taken from his foster family, his whereabouts are still unknown.
And somewhere beneath the layers of aliases, false identities and conflicting stories is the truth about what happened to a little boy named Michael Hughes.