With escalating abuse and violence, a father becomes a husband, and very likely a killer. Sharon takes on a new identity, leaving her old life and her sense of self behind. A supposed accident leaves Michael in foster care as authorities discover his family was never who they said they were. Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened to before or after watching the film. If you are hoping to avoid spoilers, we recommend watching the film before listening to episode 3.
With escalating abuse and violence, a father becomes a husband, and very likely a killer. Sharon takes on a new identity, leaving her old life and her sense of self behind. A supposed accident leaves Michael in foster care as authorities discover his family was never who they said they were.
Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened to before or after watching the film. If you are hoping to avoid spoilers, we recommend watching the film before listening to episode 3.
Girl in the Picture Podcast is brought to you by Netflix and Main Event Media.
Narrator: Skye Borgman
Writer and Producer: Anna Priestland
Executive Producers: Emily Bon and Jimmy Fox for Main Event Media, Skye Borgman and Matt Birkbeck.
Sound Editor: Joel Porter
Sound Designer and Mixer: Reed Thomas Lawrence
Original Music Composition by: Jimmy Stofer
Based on the books “A Beautiful Child" and “Finding Sharon” by Matt Birkbeck.
Special Thanks: Joe Fitzpatrick, Karen Parsley, Charles Engles, Merle Bean, and Mary Dufresne.
If you are in need of support on any of the issues related to this podcast, please reach out to someone.
If you need to talk with someone, but aren't sure which service is best for you, Victim Connect Resource Center can help you.
The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)
1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or
or online using a safe computer at www.thehotline.org
National Sexual Violence Resource Centre
National Human Trafficking Hotline
Hotline: 1-888-373-7888
Text: 233733
ChildHelp National Child Abuse Hotline
Hotline: 1 (800) 422 – 4453
Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via phone and text.
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Hotline: 1 (800) 843 – 5678
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Hotline: 1 (800) 662 – 4357
Skye: This podcast contains content which may be upsetting or triggering to some listeners. Please check the show notes for resources should you need to reach out to someone.
[00:00:50]
Joe: I think that they kept moving because he kept committing crimes. Now, these are what we call midnight moves, where you go to his work the next day and he's not there, she's not in school. No one knows what happened. He just disappeared the night before. He forced her to move frequently, breaking off relationships. Now, we know that Sharon has at least three children. And the only one that she kept was Michael. And I think that the reason she got to keep Michael was that kept her around. I think he let her keep Michael to control her.
[00:01:30]
Skye: At the end of Episode Two of "Girl in the Picture," Warren Marshall, and a heavily pregnant Sharon left Tampa. Everyone thought they were just taking a trip, until their trailer exploded and the police, suspecting arson, came looking for them. Something else had happened too. Police discovered Warren's boat, with holes drilled in it, at the bottom of Tampa Bay. When he tried to claim the insurance, a warrant was issued for his arrest. 1200 miles away from Tampa in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the owner of a club called Passions put an ad in the local newspaper looking for adult dancers. Passions was a far cry from the glamour of Mons Venus, with a $3 cover charge and a loophole that allowed customers to bring their own beer inside. Karen, a 19-year-old waitress, who lived in Tulsa at the time, answered the ad and began working at the club. The first real friend she made was another new dancer named Tonya. With Passions' rule that all women had to work a minimum of five nights a week, Karen and Tonya spent most nights in between dances, planning how they would sneak out to bar hop without Tonya's husband Clarence finding out. Karen had no idea that who she had just met was really Warren and Sharon Marshall living under new names. And she didn't know that Tonya wasn't really Clarence's wife. She was his daughter, Sharon. Here's Karen talking about that time.
[00:03:24]
Karen: I met Tonya at Passions in the fall of 1989, both 19. And we clicked 'cause we were babies. We just happened to hit it right off the bat. As she was nice to everybody. And she was married to Clarence, and they had a little boy.
Skye: As they got to know each other, Karen knew Tonya and Clarence weren't happy in their marriage.
[00:03:51]
Karen: They never held hands. They never really stood beside each other. Clarence wouldn't let us go out with a baby at all. We could go out together, but we couldn't take the baby with us. And that's why I kinda understood why she dated other people.
Skye: Tonya had met a boy that made her feel happy, unlike Clarence. His name was Kevin, and he wanted to help her escape her controlling husband.
[00:04:19]
Karen: I'd come in and I'd see bruises, like, on her legs, her head, her arms. I mean, there was times it was bad, like, really bad. Finally, she started to admit he did it. It took a while. You know, one time, she said he pushed her down the stairs, or this, or that. But, you know, she didn't want to talk about Clarence. I just knew there was something wrong 'cause some of the things he would say sometimes just didn't make sense.
[00:04:57]
Skye: Clarence told Karen he was a reserve police officer, and he was close friends with the local sheriff. The thing was Karen had never seen Clarence in any uniform.
Karen: I didn't know what he was capable of until I got the phone call.
[00:05:18]
Skye: It was April 1990 when the Passions' manager asked Karen to come into his office. Clarence was on the phone. He was calling from Oklahoma City.
Karen: They told me that Tonya was at this hospital, and there was an accident. They said she had been hit by a car. And that she was found right there on the highway. That she was in ICU, and that she was not allowed any visitors. So I found out the address, and then we went up. I didn't think he was telling the truth.
[00:06:01]
Skye: Tonya had been found unconscious on the side of an interstate off ramp after what appeared to be a hit and run. Earlier that day, she, Clarence, and their son had checked into a Motel Six. At 12:20 A.M., Tonya was seen by the motel security guard walking alone in the direction of a truck stop convenience store. The clerk at the store said she bought some groceries, used the payphone, and put on headphones before walking back towards the motel. Not long after, the same clerk saw the paramedics lights on the off ramp. Three people in a truck had seen a shoe in the middle of the road before seeing Tonya, unconscious and convulsing. As Tonya was taken to the hospital, police arrived at the scene to investigate. She was being assessed in the ICU by the attending neurosurgeon, Dr. Charles Engles.
[00:06:56]
Dr. Engles: Tonya Hughes arrived sometime after midnight. And her condition was fairly unremarkable. She was unconscious. Her examination didn't show any severe signs of brain damage or severe swelling. Her main injury was a head injury. Her vital signs were stable. She was not in shock. So on the scale of things, she was hurt, but she wasn't bad hurt. Certainly, the severe ones from an auto pedestrian accident truly don't live very long in the ICU. But I was optimistic that with her age, and the general nature of her injuries, that she had reasonable chances to come through this.
[00:07:44]
Skye: When Karen arrived at the hospital, she ignored the no visitors sign that Clarence had put up on Tonya's door. She says that straightaway, something wasn't right. It did not seem like a hit and run. Scratches on Tonya's chest looked like she'd been in a struggle, and the nurses felt this too. But whatever thoughts the nurses had about Tonya's condition, I never documented any concerns.
[00:08:12]
Karen: I was so happy that there was somebody here besides Clarence. They let me see her, and then I came back up again. I mean, she was starting to move a little better. Like, you say, "Tonya," she starts to, like, move a little bit. I mean, she could actually move her head, sometimes towards you. She was getting better 'cause she was responding.
[00:08:36]
Skye: From the nurse's notes, it appeared that Tonya was improving. But a few days in, she took a turn for the worse.
Dr. Engles: She seemed to have a sinking spell. It's not uncommon that she would get better, and then in a day or two, then decline because that is sometimes how the cerebral edema or brain swelling occurs. It's not too bad at first, and then it can continue to build up. And then like a chain of dominoes, things start to fall and they start to sink.
[00:09:10]
Skye: Karen traveled back and forth between Tulsa and Oklahoma City to sit with Tonya, letting the nurses know whenever she'd move a little or responded to her voice. Karen hoped that Tonya would soon come home.
Karen: I had gotten home and the phone had rung, and it was the hospital. She had passed. I'm like, "I could come up the next morning," 'cause he had decided that he was gonna have cremated, and I couldn't do that. So they let me stay in there with her.
[00:09:46]
Skye: When Karen told Clarence that she thought Tonya should have a traditional burial, he told her she'd have to pay the $500 to have Tonya's body transported back to Tulsa from Oklahoma City. In the end, the owner of Passions paid the money, and Tonya was brought back home. Karen couldn't shake the feeling that Clarence had something to do with Tonya's death. Nurses had told her that he'd spent time alone with her the night before she died, and she just felt that he had done something. She even went to Oklahoma Highway Patrol for help, hoping they'd look into the accident, wondering if he had something to do with it. But they told her it was just a simple hit and run. They were investigating, but had no leads on the driver. And without any witnesses and no evidence on the make of the car, the case stalled. Tonya's nurses suggested that Karen contact the Department of Human Services, or DHS about Michael. Karen knew that Michael had been in a motel room with Clarence since the accident, and she was worried about him.
[00:10:53]
Karen: I wrote down what condition Michael was in and when I had seen him last in. Hospital said that he was not talking. When I'd seen him, even before they left, he was in great condition. He was a normal two-year-old.
Skye: DHS trace clearance back to the motel and found Michael was with him. Clarence said he was struggling to cope since Tonya had died, and asked if Michael could be placed into temporary foster care while he sorted out his affairs. Before Tonya's funeral, Michael was taken to the home of Ernest and Merle Bean in Choctaw, Oklahoma. This is Merle, Michael's foster mom.
[00:11:33]
Merle: We got Michael on May the first of 199, and he had just celebrated his second birthday in March. We got instructions from the caseworker that we were never to tell him no, you're never to tell him don't. He's still on the bottle, and he can only have Pepsi. And so the caseworker standing there, and I'm in the front home, and I'm holding him. And he's crying. And I said, "Michael, please don't cry." We were kind of in the dark about everything that was going on. And so I would notice that he would get upset, and that he would just go in the hall and start banging his head. And so I would, you know, go and intervene. And he didn't talk yet. He had no sensory things, you know, like, getting your hands dirty or getting your clothes dirty. I mean, he was just--he couldn't stand it. The very first night I took him off the Pepsi and just gave him a cup with milk in it, and he started to settle. And by the end of that week, he's a different kid.
[00:13:02]
Karen: I was glad that Michael was safe. That was the most important thing, that he was safe. I was young. I couldn't have kept him then. At that time, I didn't think I could protect him.
Skye: Karen says she knew Tonya wanted to leave Clarence. She was finding the courage to take Michael and go, but she was just stuck. She couldn't put Michael's life in danger if Clarence was to come after them.
[00:13:34]
Karen: You couldn't convince her. She wouldn't move at all. I know she wanted to really do it. She was scared. She couldn't leave him. She made it clear 100 times. "I can't leave. He'll find me. I knew too much." Tonya came in tell me that Clarence had taken a life insurance policy out on her. It was right before she died, like, a few months before she died. She was terrified. She didn't know what was next. That's what scared her. She was only 20 years old. And on top of that, he didn't have a life insurance policy. She didn't find one for him. I don't know why he did it. I think it happened in the hotel. I mean, the hotel they were staying at, I think that's where it all happen. They hurt her. I think he hit her too hard. I think he had to stage what he did. He had to have killed her. He wanted to kill her. I wish I knew. I wouldn't put it past him. I think he knew she was gonna run.
[00:14:59]
Skye: When we look at the police reports of the accident, they did interview Clarence. And at the time, there weren't any red flags. The police checked his car for any signs that may suggest he was responsible for the accident. They cross checked the evidence found on the side of the road. There was a broken car antenna and red paint flakes. Nothing matched. Clarence his car was blue and showed no damage. As far as his alibi, the security guard had seen Tonya leave the motel just after midnight. The store clerk watched her use the phone and head back towards the motel. So who was she calling? In Clarence's statement, he says she called him to tell him she was on her way back. If Clarence was involved in the accident, or even staged it, which was most recently suggested by the FBI, then it had to have happened in the few minutes between the last time she was seen at the store and the moment the men found her at the scene. The FBI believe that after hitting her in the back of the head, Clarence may have thrown from the car. Either way, her death was ruled a vehicular homicide. Her friends at Passions got together to organize a proper goodbye. And when it came to engraving Tonya's headstone, her friends settled on, "Tonya, I'll always be with you." Shortly before Tonya, Clarence, and Michael had arrived in Tulsa, they crossed paths with a young couple in New Orleans.
[00:16:33]
Karen: We got a phone call. A couple had walked into an attorney's office not far from my house. The girl that worked there called me and said, "You want a baby? Lady's due in nine weeks." So we said yes. We wanted to adopt, definitely. It was a private adoption. So it's not like you have to go through an agency.
Skye: This is Mary. And the baby she's referring to, that's the baby Sharon was pregnant with when they left Florida.
[00:17:04]
Mary: [inaudible] said they walked in, they had the little boy with them. And they said they couldn't afford another child. Can you find someone to adopt? And we walked in and we saw Clarence and Tonya sitting at the table. And first thing was he was so much older than her. Why was he that much older to this young girl? Was he really the father? And he said he was. They sat across from each other. They never once looked at each other in the eye, and they never once touched. They had a marriage certificate, but they were married in New Orleans right before this attorneys meeting. And he was he felt like he was more of the father figure to her, but they were married.
[00:17:48]
Skye: Florida police were after Warren, the trailer park fire and the sinking of the boat. He knew police would be on the lookout for a father and daughter. And so becoming husband and wife would give them a better cover. There may also have been another reason to force Sharon into marriage. Sharon was 19, so Warren had no legal rights over her unborn baby. As her husband though, he could make decisions.
[00:18:18]
Mary: Every time we met with him, he controlled the whole conversation with her. And I watched her. I watched her because she was the one carrying the baby. And I always felt that he had the control over her totally from the beginning. We pre-paid all the doctor bills, paid everything. And he knew it was gonna be a girl 'cause we had gone into the gynecologist. I paid for all that. And they slipped that it was a girl, you know. And I think he was ready to get rid of her. He didn't act like he cared. We felt like he just didn't even look like he fit in. I was always leery about them. I called a friend and said, "I know you can't give me information, just tell me should I. Is there something that I should know with this couple because it looks strange?" I got a phone call saying, "Her water bag broke. Get to the hospital." So we got to the hospital. She was in her room, and she'd already delivered. And I went in there privately just for an eye. And I said, "Did you want to see her?" She says, "No, I can't." And I told her that day that, "The day comes, you just have to reach out to me." And she said, "I can't do it." But I think she was just too afraid, and Michael was everything to her. And I think back on this day, like, why couldn't she have told me more than a day? Why couldn't she have said, 'I need help?'" It's things like that that you think back on. Why, when we were alone, when you had the opportunity, did you not say, "Help me."?
[00:20:18]
Skye: Here was a young woman of 19 who had just married her abusive father, a man who had been sexually exploiting her since she was a child. It had taken her years to open up to her friends about some of her abuse. The idea that, after giving birth, she might confide in a stranger who's about to adopt her baby, it seems impossible that Sharon would have asked for help.
[00:20:50]
Mary: That was a Friday night she was born. Saturday, we went there, they were gone. Sunday, we took her home from the hospital. And it said baby us on the birth certificate. It didn't even have her name.
Skye: Sharon hadn't just lost her name and identity when she became Tonya, that spark that everyone spoke about during her teenage years. It's as though when she became Tonya, it burned out. And by marrying her and moving her to Tulsa, yet another city where she knew no one, Clarence took back some of that control he lost when she became an adult. And the more control he had over her, the less control she had over her own life and relationships. She was sharing less with people, and was perhaps even more careful of what she told others. She just didn't share herself with Karen like she did with Heather or Jenny, but it was Karen who would be there for her at the end.
[00:21:53]
Karen: I had her body transferred, and he agreed on the funeral, but I never gave him the $500 he wanted. They set up the funeral, which we did all in white and blue, her favorite colors. It was really nice. And everything was great, and then here he with the security guards. Oh my god!
[00:22:18]
Skye: After 63 people sign the guestbook at Tonya's funeral, Clarence arrived with two police officers who would come with him as friends. At the time, he lived next door to the local sheriff, and he even joined the Fraternal Order of Police, usually reserved for actual police officers. Full of bravado, Clarence stood up at the funeral and insisted on giving a eulogy.
[00:22:46]
Karen: It kept going on and on. It felt like forever, but yeah, probably about a 10-minute speech where you just don't even listen to him. He dyed his hair, and it was just all dyed down his back and everything. It was all down to his neck.
Skye: Towards the end of the funeral, Oklahoma City police officers arrived to question Clarence about the accident. It had come to their attention that Clarence and Tonya may not have been who they claimed to be. When the owner of Passions wanted to let Tonya's family know about her death, he went through her job application. He found that she was born Tonya Tadlock, and that she was from Alabama. He tracked down her mother, who, after hearing about telling his death, told him that there must be some kind of mistake. Her daughter, Tonya Tadlock, had died as a baby 20 years earlier. Tonya's friends had no idea who they were burying. The police, who had come to the funeral to question Clarence, fingerprinted him and let him go. Shortly after the funeral, the Oklahoma City Police got a call from Tonya's Life Insurance Company. Clarence had just attempted to claim the $80,000 insurance policy he'd set up for Tonya. The problem was he kept giving them incorrect Social Security Numbers. When the police, accompanied by the U.S. Marshal, arrived at Clarence's Tulsa home, he'd already fled the state.
[00:24:25]
Joe: He tried to collect on his wife's life insurance policy.
Skye: That's Special Agent Joe Fitzpatrick, who was with the FBI's Oklahoma office.
Joe: The Social Security Number he used was wrong.
Skye: By this time, a lot of agencies were involved, the Tulsa and Oklahoma police departments, the U.S. Marshal, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, and even the Secret Service. They discovered that Warren and Sharon had become Clarence and Tonya shortly before the adoption with Mary in New Orleans. At the cemetery in Alabama, they found the grave site of the real Tania Tadlock, who had died as a baby, and in that same cemetery, the grave of the real Clarence Hughes, names stolen to match their approximate ages.
[00:25:17]
Joe: We found Clarence Hugh's real name was Franklin Delano Floyd. He'd been released out of prison to a halfway house in 1972. Then in 1973, he attacks a female. He was arrested, posted bail, but he was on the run ever since that time in a fuse day for almost two decades.
Skye: Franklin Floyd, that was his real name. Escaped bail, and for 20 years, having lived under who knows how many aliases. When police began to read his file, Floyd literally cease to exist in 1973.
[00:26:05]
Joe: I'm sure that he committed other crimes, but we don't know what they were or where they were. And going through Floyd's past, we had more questions about the boy's mother, Tonya. We didn't know where she came from, what her true identity was, or any of her history.
[00:26:24]
Skye: Fitzpatrick didn't yet know about Sharon Marshall, or that Floyd, who had posed under so many aliases, was her father. Authorities were still working on the assumption that Tonya, whoever she was, was Floyd's wife. When DHS was notified of Clarence being Floyd and him being on the run, they terminated his parental status. Four months after Tonya's funeral, he was arrested in Augusta, Georgia, and imprisoned on the 1973 attempted kidnapping charge. From prison, he was granted visits with Michael while in foster care, but these were terminated when the DNA test proved that he was not Michael's biological father. Michael's real father was Sharon's ex-boyfriend Greg, who she had left behind in Arizona before arriving in Florida. Greg didn't even know that Sharon had been pregnant until after her death. Floyd called him out of the blue and asked if he would take Michael. Greg agreed, but he never heard from Floyd again.
[00:27:38]
Karen: Franklin Floyd was very irate, and that's when the case kind of broke wide open.
Skye: He would spend the next few years fighting in court that he was as good as Michael's father, hoping that he'd regain custody once he got out. He had psychologists evaluate him, with one going as far as to write a letter to the judge stating how sorry he felt for Floyd, believing he was a good father. Even with his priors well known, Floyd had a way with people in authority, and had perfected ways to manipulate the system to his own advantage. It may explain how he got psychologists to side with him and was able to keep police as friends. After almost four years in prison, when Michael was six, a new judge took over the parental case and allowed Floyd, a known pedophile, violent offender, and federal fugitive, in-person prison visits with Michael again.
[00:28:48]
Karen: When Michael went to visit Franklin Floyd at the prison, he would call him that mean man, and he would crawl up under a chair. He had never done anything for Michael in that four and a half years, no gifts, no cards, no letters, nothing. And so when they started up the supervised visits again, he started giving Michael Batman toys. And I thought, "Hmm, something's going on." And the first social worker that we had told Franklin Floyd where we lived, where we went to church, who we were. And so she got removed from that job. She wasn't a social worker anymore.
[00:29:50]
Skye: Merle and Earnest say that the social worker also felt sorry for Floyd, that she believed he was Michael's father. And that's why she was helping him. That conversation the social worker had with Floyd, telling him where Michael was living, it changed the course of Michael's life, of so many lives. In 1994, Floyd was released again from prison. And by this time, the Beans had almost completed the adoption process for Michael.
[00:30:28]
Merle: I had this hunch, I don't know what. And I called DHS and I said, "I'm afraid that something's going on." Then they said, "You're just paranoid." And I told them about we were in the backyard, we were all in the pool. And the dog just went crazy. And we heard somebody come in through the back property. And so we got all the foster kids and everybody, and our kids, and got them all in the house. I thought, you know, that's just strange because that same week, I was leaving the house, and I came around the corner down here. And this pickup truck came by. And this man was going, like, I don't know, 5, 10 miles an hour. And he just kept looking at me. And the whole time, I'm driving, I'm thinking, "What's the man looking at?" And so when I got back home, I called DHS and I said, "Can you tell me what kind of vehicle Franklin Floyd drives or what he looks like?" And when they described it to me, I said, "I am pretty sure that that man was by my house." They said, "Now, you're just paranoid."
[00:31:52]
Skye: Coming up on episode four of "Girl in the picture."
Woman: It was all over the news.
Man 1: A man had been tied to a tree in the woods, handcuffed, duct taped.
Man 2: No one had seen the boy.
Man 1: We had no clue who the victim was.
Man 3: What else can we learn from this individual that's going to help identify them?
Joe Fitzpatrick: We looked at the photograph. The resemblance was overwhelming.
[00:32:27]
Woman: My best friend was dead. She's dead, and she's not sharing.
Man: He had a pattern of kidnapping children.
Merle: You know, I just really have a feeling that something's gonna happen.
[00:32:56]
Skye: "Girl in the Picture" podcast is brought to you by Netflix and Main Event Media. Narrated by me Skye Borgmann. Written and produced by Anna Priestland. Executive produced by Emily Bond and Jimmy Foxx for Main Event Media, me, Skye Borgmann, and Matt Birkbeck. Music composition by Jimmy Stouffer. Sound edited by Joel Porter. Sound design and mixed by Reed Thomas Lawrence. Based on the books, "A Beautiful Child" and "Finding Sharon" by Matt Birkbeck.
[00:33:22]