CHAPTER FIVE: The Fugitives

How was Franklin Floyd able to evade justice and hide from authorities for so long? In this second bonus episode, we spoke with Mark Yancey who prosecuted Floyd for the kidnapping charge that finally put him behind bars. Yancey also explained how Floyd ended up on death row in the Florida for murder and he remembered the day investigators gathered at Suzie's grave site to right a wrong.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Only finding out as an adult that you were adopted can throw you into a tailspin, forcing you to reconsider long-held truths. In this bonus episode, we hear from Dr. Amanda Baden, an expert on the experiences of late discovery adoptees. Research has shown the later an adoptee finds out, the more distress they have, and even finding out at 4 or 5 is considered “late.” Dr. Baden discussed why some adoptive parents choose to delay telling their kids and shared some of the long-term ramifications these revelations can have on an adult's life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our first bonus episode, we try to make sense of an unimaginable loss. In early January 2024, our “Hello, John Doe” host Todd Matthews died, suddenly. This episode memorializes Todd, a pioneer and an original. We couldn’t let him go to the other side of the veil without a proper goodbye. And Kate Mishkin, our producer talks to Steve Patterson one last time to discuss the impact Todd had on his life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our season finale, Steve’s sisters roadtrip to his hometown to see him. Their stay in Cherryville and a surprise guest ends up unraveling the goodwill between Steve’s new relatives and his longstanding ones. Todd grapples with his involvement with the family and realizes that decades of John Doe cases haven't necessarily equipped him to handle the living.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of relatives on Sandi’s side came out of the woodwork after Steve found his biological mother. Some of his long-lost relatives on his maternal side he let in, some he kept at arm’s length. In this episode, Todd goes to a family get-together to spend time with Steve’s half-siblings and learn what they make of finding him after all these years. After some disappointing news, Todd doubles down on fulfilling his promise to help Steve figure out who his father is.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Soon after Steve started texting with his biological mother, he discovered he had a sister named Amy, a school bus driver in Virginia. At this point, Steve wanted to get to know Amy, who’d grown up under Sandi’s roof. He was curious about her childhood, the road he hadn't taken. But he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know their mother. In this episode, Todd discovers the trauma that shot through Steve’s birth family was worse than he could have ever imagined.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve wasn’t the only boy from his birth family to disappear and be presumed dead. When Suzie grew up, she had a son. His name was Michael. One day he went to school, with his Aladdin backpack in hand, and never came home. He was just a first grader. When the the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children pushed to reopen the case, FBI Agent Lobb pieced together what happened to him. Incredibly, Floyd was trying to pass off Michael as his son.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Franklin Floyd had been a wanted man since 1962 when he left town to avoid a kidnapping conviction  Bringing him to justice was the work of many investigators. In this episode, we meet FBI Agent Scott Lobb who did what no investigator had done before: he got the wily Floyd to tell the truth. What the FBI Agents discovered would lead him to Sandi’s doorstep. He'd be the one to tell her what happened to her little girl.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After Franklin Floyd kidnapped Sandi’s daughter, 6 -year-old Suzie, they left town and never came back. They spent their life on the run, with alias after alias. But they did stay in Forest Park, Georgia for years, long enough for Suzie to graduate from high school with the second highest grades in her class, and earn a scholarship to Georgia Tech. She dreamt of becoming an aerospace engineer and escaping Floyd. A twist of fate would defer both.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Todd started looking into Steve’s unusual adoption, he was faced with different versions of events. The story Steve's adoptive mother Mary told him and the tale Sandi told don’t line up, except for one detail: the tiny Honda they both remember from the day Sandi left Steve with Mary. For a long time after, Sandi said she searched for her son. Steve is skeptical so Todd tries to figure out what obstacles stood in her way, back in 1975. We discover Sandi lost another child, too: a precocious daughter named Suzie.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.