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The body of a woman found on a road led to one mystery after another, resulting in a strange tale of kidnapping, false identities, incest, and murder.
If you like twists and turns with more twists and turns, then follow along closely…if you can. Thanks to all the evil madness in the world, unfortunately, platforms like Netflix will never run out of true-crime documentaries to stream and Girl in the Picture is one of them. True crime stories may be depressing, but they also remind the public that oftentimes you really don’t know some of the people you meet even if just in passing. Girl in the Picture recounts a jaw-dropping saga of multiple identities, kidnappings, incest, and murder, but each new revelation only leads to another mystery.
The story begins in April 1990 after the discovery of the body of a blond-haired, 20-year-old female on the side of an Oklahoma City road. Initially identified as Tonya Hughes, the victim was a Tulsa stripper married to an older man named Clarence Hughes with whom she shared a 2-year-old son. Posthumous medical exams revealed bruising dotting along her body was inconsistent with proof of her death being caused by a hit-and-run. Even more head-scratching was when Tonya’s exotic-dancer friends searched the phone book for relatives and were eventually told by a woman that Tonya was her daughter, but she died 20 years ago when she was 18 months old.
Stunning Developments Continued in the Case
According to a friend named Karen Parsley who worked with Tonya at OKC adult entertainment club Passions, Tonya lived under the thumb of her “weird” and menacing older spouse, Clarence. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Tonya’s son Michael’s behavior grew so bizarre it compelled the Department of Human Services to place him in foster care. Clarence maintained visitation rights until DHS paternity tests confirmed that he was not the child’s biological father. Ensuring termination of Clarence’s parental rights was the fuse that lit his psychotic fire.
On September 12, 1994, he visited Michael’s elementary school, and took the boy and the school’s principal hostage at gunpoint, attracting the attention of the FBI. Federal sleuthing led to another bombshell. In 1990, Clarence tried to collect on Tonya’s life insurance policy with a Social Security number belonging to a man named Franklin Delano Floyd, who had abducted a little girl in 1962 and robbed a bank in 1963. After recognizing Tonya’s photo on TV, Tonya’s former high school friends from Forest Park, Georgia reached out to the FBI and identified her as Sharon Marshall, a gifted student who received a full ride to Georgia Tech University to study aerospace engineering. More importantly, they recognized Clarence/Floyd, Tonya’s husband, as her father Warren who married his pregnant teenage daughter and moved to Tampa where he put her to work at the Mons Venus strip club.
Further investigations tied in facts as to why the couple fled Florida for Oklahoma – Clarence/Floyd landed on death row for the murder of a dancer who befriended Tonya/Sharon in Florida. People who knew the two up until Tonya/Sharon’s murder provide further details of their strange relationship. The documentary underscores the desire for justice even for Michael, who was never found.
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