The Hidden Envelope of Horrors: How Shredded Photos Taped Under a Stolen Truck in Kansas Blew Open the 40-Year Reign of Terror by a Monster Who Kidnapped His Stepdaughter, Forced Her to Marry Him, and Executed Her Six-Year-Old Son in the Woods.

This is the definitive story of Franklin Delano Floyd, the stolen life of Suzanne Svakus, and the terrifying, decades-long question: How did he get away with it for so long, and what finally brought his nightmare to an end?

I’ve spent my life studying the darkest corners of the human psyche, but this story—the saga of Franklin Delano Floyd—still catches my breath.

It’s a labyrinth of stolen identities, shocking cruelty, and a level of brazenness that defies belief. It didn’t just happen; it was allowed to happen for decades, until an ordinary mechanic stumbled upon the hidden, physical evidence of pure evil.

🛠️ The Dirty Little Secret in the Gas Tank

It’s March 1995 in a dusty Kansas auto body shop. Just an average Tuesday for a mechanic wiring new trailer lights onto a beat-up, old pickup truck. Nothing special, until his hand brushes against something tucked away, wedged tight on top of the gas tank.

It was a sealed envelope. Wrapped meticulously with masking tape, like someone had desperately tried to make it disappear forever. He brought it inside, his hands already heavy with a nameless dread. He ripped it open and the world stopped.

Inside were ninety-seven photographs. But they weren’t whole. They were shredded pieces, sliced with a panicked midnight violence. A cruel mosaic of fragmented faces and bodies. And yet, even in their destruction, the horror bled through.

Women. Children. Posed in ways so degrading, so disturbing, you almost wished the scissors had finished the job.

Then, the true nightmare centerpiece: images of a woman, bound, blindfolded, and brutally beaten. Her body bore the unmistakable mark of fresh tan lines—a tiny, heartbreaking clue that she had recently come from somewhere warm, alive, and free before this monstrous fate.

This wasn’t evidence you could ignore. This was a scream trapped on film, demanding justice. The mechanic called the police. Because in that instant, it was clear that this wasn’t just trash in a gas tank. It was a trophy—the toxic trail of a predator.

🌴 The Skull in the Swamp

The truth, as it turned out, had already begun to surface just two days earlier, over a thousand miles away in the humid, swampy ground off a Florida highway.

A human skull was found half-buried. Scattered nearby were silicone breast implants, broken jewelry, bits of clothing, and even a clump of hair. The victim was later identified as nineteen-year-old Cheryl Anne Keso, who had vanished back in 1989.

The juxtaposition—a hidden envelope of torture photos in a Kansas truck and newly unearthed remains in a Florida swamp—was about to blow the lid off a crime spree that began twenty years earlier.

To understand how we got here, you have to rewind the tape to the stolen life of one little girl.

👧 The Stolen Child: Suzanne

The year is 1974. The villain of our story, Franklin Delano Floyd—then going by the alias Brandon Williams—marries a woman with four young children.

Here’s the problem: Floyd was a convicted felon with a rap sheet that included kidnapping and bank robbery, and he was currently on the run from his parole officer. He was a human black hole.

Weeks into the marriage, the mother is locked up for a brief, thirty-day stint for bad checks. A minor setback for her, but a catastrophic opportunity for Floyd.

While she was inside, he did the unthinkable. He kidnapped all four children. The boy was put up for adoption. Two girls were dumped with social services. But the last one—the oldest, five-year-old Suzanne Svakus—Floyd kept her for himself.

From that moment on, they vanished. Bouncing from state to state, changing names like socks, always posing as father and daughter. Behind the fake IDs and forged papers, the dark truth remained: Franklin Delano Floyd had just stolen a child, and he was never giving her back.

🌠 Sharon Marshall’s Bright, Crushed Future

Suzanne Svakus finally resurfaced in Georgia, only now she was “Sharon Marshall.”

And “Sharon” was thriving. She was the kind of student teachers adored—friendly, popular, brilliant. She excelled in the gifted program, Junior ROTC, and the science club. She had the kind of dreams that launched careers: aerospace engineering.

Georgia Tech accepted her with a full scholarship. This girl was on track to literally launch herself into the stars.

But she never got there.

Instead, she dropped a devastating bombshell on her friends: she was pregnant. And her so-called father, “Warren Marshall” (Floyd), immediately forced her to leave town.

No Georgia Tech. No bright future. Just another fresh start in another city, with another lie, and one more stolen chance at the life she deserved.

💔 The Tampa Crossroads

Floyd dragged Suzanne, still posing as “Sharon,” south. The next stop was Tampa, Florida.

In April 1988, Suzanne gave birth to a baby boy, Michael Gregory Marshall. His middle name was a quiet tribute to the child’s real father—a small act of defiance in a life of total control.

Suzanne, desperate to survive, began dancing at Mon’s Venus, a notorious local strip club. That is where she met nineteen-year-old Cheryl Anne Keso.

Cheryl was instantly drawn to Suzanne, but she saw the flashing red flags. Franklin drove Suzanne to the club every night and waited outside like a guard dog, obsessively hovering. The sinister kicker? He was also the one pushing Suzanne into sex work for extra cash, even buying her condoms. What kind of father was this?

Suzanne confided in Cheryl, admitting she was terrified of Franklin. But she couldn’t leave because he was using Baby Michael as collateral. Bolt, and she risked losing her son forever.

Cheryl tried to help the only way she knew how. She reported Suzanne for welfare fraud, hoping the system—Child Services—would step in and wrench the mother and child from Franklin’s grip.

Instead of saving them, that single act of kindness sealed Cheryl’s fate.

💀 The Killer’s Trophy

Franklin retaliated with unimaginable brutality. He kidnapped Cheryl, tied her up, blindfolded her, tortured her, and finally shot her twice in the head. He dumped her body by the freeway, then took off again with Suzanne and baby Michael.

But Franklin made one colossal mistake—the kind of mistake only a narcissistic monster makes. He took photographs. Pictures of Cheryl’s torture, her humiliation, and her death. He kept them like sick, dark trophies.

Years later, those very images would resurface, taped under a truck in Kansas, finally exposing him for the monster he was.

⛓️ A Marriage of Chains

After Tampa, Franklin dragged Suzanne and Michael to New Orleans. Here, the mask of “father” finally slipped away entirely.

He didn’t bother with the pretense anymore. Instead, he marched Suzanne into a courthouse and married her. The names on the paperwork—Tanya and Clarence Hughes—were fake, of course, but the marriage was horrifyingly, legally real.

The stolen life of Suzanne Svakus ended in Oklahoma City in the spring of 1990. She was just shy of her twenty-first birthday.

She was walking back to a motel with a bag of groceries when a car slammed into her—a brutal hit-and-run. Suzanne clung to life for a few days but didn’t make it.

To this day, no one has ever been charged. But the suspicion has always been heavy: Franklin was right there. With no proof and no confession, he walked away clean.

👶 The Final, Unforgivable Act

Shortly after Suzanne’s death, Franklin handed little Michael over to Oklahoma Child Services and vanished into thin air, leaving the boy behind like a pawn in a sick, unfinished game.

He was eventually arrested and sent back to prison to serve the bank robbery sentence he had been dodging since the 70s. While he was inside, a blood test proved Michael was not his biological son.

But that fact meant nothing to Franklin. Biology didn’t matter. Control did.

When he was released in 1993, his twisted obsession sharpened into a singular goal: getting Michael back. And he did it in the most brutal way imaginable.

September 1994. Indian Meridian Elementary School in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Franklin strolled straight into the building, brazen as ever, and demanded that six-year-old Michael Hughes be pulled out of class.

When Michael appeared, Franklin pulled a gun. He forced the boy and the principal into the parking lot, hijacked the principal’s truck, and drove them into the woods.

He handcuffed the principal to a tree, then vanished with Michael.

As they headed toward Dallas, Michael was just being a typical, restless six-year-old. But to Franklin, that was unforgivable. Enraged, he pulled out a gun and shot the child twice in the back of the head. He buried him near the last interstate exit before leaving Oklahoma.

To this day, Michael’s body has never been found.

🎯 Justice from a Stolen Vehicle

After the murder, Franklin abandoned the stolen truck in Texas. By October 1994, it was towed, sold as a theft return by the insurance company, and eventually, months later, ended up in the Kansas auto body shop.

March 1995. The mechanic finds the envelope. The truth finally begins to unravel.

Franklin Delano Floyd was eventually convicted of kidnapping. But when detectives began connecting the dots—the photos, Cheryl Keso’s remains, and Michael’s disappearance—they finally had the evidence to tie him to the full, devastating scope of his crimes.

Suzanne’s story wasn’t finished, even in death. She didn’t even get her real name back until 2014, twenty-four years after she died.

A book about the case, A Beautiful Child, featuring a photo of Suzanne under one of her aliases, finally reached the eyes of her adoptive sister. She recognized the woman, and DNA confirmed the devastating truth. After decades of lies, Suzanne Svakus finally had her name restored.

In 2014, Franklin Delano Floyd, on death row in Florida, finally confessed to the kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Michael Hughes. On the “accident” that killed Suzanne, he never confessed.

In 2023, he died of natural causes at age 79. No remorse. No closure. He took his final secrets to the grave.

It took forty years, a stolen truck, a buried skull, a murdered child, and a packet of horrifying photographs for the truth to surface.

The depth of this darkness is immeasurable. But in the end, a single mechanic, acting on a gut feeling, ensured that the truth—and the ghosts of Suzanne, Michael, and Cheryl—would not be buried with the monster who stole their lives.