‘Girl in the Picture’: Everything You Need to Know About Sharon Marshall
Several truly fascinating true crime documentaries and docuseries have hit networks and streaming service providers in the last few months. Netflix’s newest offering is no different. On Wednesday, July 6, true crime enthusiasts can tune in to watch Girl in the Picture. The upcoming true-crime documentary walks viewers through the tragic and mysterious life of a woman who died after being hit by a car. It wasn’t an open and shut case, though. In this case, the truth was certainly stranger than fiction.
What is ‘Girl in the Picture’ about?
Girl in the Picture is Netflix’s latest true-crime offering. The documentary tells the story of a woman found on the side of an Oklahoma City road in 1990, suffering from serious injuries. The woman, later identified as Tonya Hughes, is believed to have been hit by a car. She died from her injuries shortly after she was found.
Police set out to figure out exactly what happened to Hughes. Her husband, who went by the name Clarence Hughes, claimed he had fallen asleep while his wife walked to get groceries from a nearby store. Hughes was found with groceries nearby, suggesting that part of Clarence’s story may have been correct. What happened after led police on a wild chase to figure out who the woman really was and what happened to her.
The Netflix documentary, Girl in the Picture, takes fans on a wild chase through multiple states and identities to figure out who Tonya Hughes really was. The documentary, released on July 6, is from the same team that worked on Abducted in Plain Sight.
Who was Tonya Hughes?
When police found a woman on the side of an Oklahoma City road, they believed the toughest part of their job would be figuring out what happened to her. When she died, the mystery got substantially more involved. Instead, the real mystery was who she was.
A former classmate later identified Tonya Hughes as Sharon Marshall, and the man portraying himself as her husband, as her father, Warren Marshall. The woman hit by a car in Oklahoma City wasn’t Sharon Marshall, either. Not really, at least. She went by Sharon Marshall in school. Hughes was eventually identified as Suzanne Sevakis. Sevakis had been kidnapped as a child after her mother was imprisoned for 30 days.
Sevakis’ mother, Sandra Brandenburg, was sentenced to 30 days in jail for passing bad checks in the 1970s. She left Sevakis and her three other children with her then-husband, Franklin Floyd. When Brandenburg returned, her children and husband were gone. None of the children were biologically related to Floyd. Two of the four children were found to have been placed in foster care. Suzanne and her brother remained missing. Sevakis was around four at the time. Bradenburg’s youngest child, Phillip, was identified through DNA testing in 2019. According to Women’s Health, he was adopted as an infant.
Hughes graduated from high school under the name Sharon Marshall. Floyd, who later went by the name Clarence as Hughes’ husband, masqueraded as Hughes’ father for years. The birth of Hughes’ son, Michael, whose father was not Floyd, remains a bit of a mystery, too.
Where is Franklin Floyd now?
Floyd was never convicted in the death of Suzanne Sevakis. Still, the career criminal is currently sitting on death row at a Florida prison. According to Esquire, Floyd is incarcerated at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. Now, 79, Floyd doesn’t have a set execution date.
While he was never tried for the death of Sevakis, he has been tried and convicted of other crimes. Floyd was convicted of killing Cheryl Ann Commesso, Sevakis’ former coworker. Commesso disappeared in 1989, and her skeletal remains were found in 1995. She was identified in 1997.
Floyd was also convicted of kidnapping following the disappearance of Michael Hughes. Floyd claimed to have killed Michael, Sevakis’ son, after abducting him from the school. Michael was in the process of being adopted at the time of his disappearance. At the time of the release of Girl in the Picture, Michael’s remains had not been located.
