(dark music) - [Narrator] What is up EWU Crew? Today, we are taking a look at cases with unexpected and surprising twists. Some of these cases are so unbelievable that you just may think they are from a movie script rather than real life, but each and every one of them is 100% true.
Our first case is shocking and complicated with more twists than you will ever see coming. This is not your typical story of murder. It is more than just one tragedy, but many wrapped up together in an almost unbelievable way.
As a teenager, Sharon Marshall appeared to have the whole world open to her. She was reportedly a Lieutenant Colonel in the ROTC and one of the best and brightest students in her class, an undeniably intelligent young woman with a kind heart to match. Upon graduating from high school in 1986 from Forest Park, Georgia, Sharon had earned a full ride scholarship to the Georgia Institute of Technology with the plan to study aerospace engineering so that she could fulfill her dream of working at NASA.
Despite this incredible opportunity, Sharon never went to college as she was harboring a secret. Sharon was pregnant during the final months of high school by her boyfriend, who she never told about the baby. Sharon hid her secret well and she ended up giving birth and allowing a wealthy couple from Texas to adopt the baby boy.
However, the pregnancy had shaken up her life plans and at one point, she apparently even tried unsuccessfully to run away with her boyfriend. After losing her chance to attend college, Sharon ended up moving to Tampa, Florida for a new start with a man named Franklin Delano Floyd. Despite having moved with Frank, Sharon started to date another man, and she was soon pregnant for a second time.
She once again, never told the baby's father about the pregnancy. This time however, she chose to keep the child and raise it with Frank. Sharon gave birth to her son Michael Gregory Marshall in 1988.
Frank and Sharon had a complicated relationship. It wasn't quite clear if it was romantic or not, but the two lived together and both provided for Sharon's son Michael. Frank worked as a painter, but he frequently suffered from a bad back and so he was rarely able to actually work.
Because of this, Sharon became an exotic dancer to provide for them but they also began to rely on welfare checks to survive. Her coworkers thought of Sharon as kind and friendly, but she was especially close to an 18-year-old co-worker named Cheryl Commesso. Despite the women's friendship, Frank and Cheryl were known to have frequent disagreements, though there were reports that the two of them may have been involved in a brief relationship.
On a weekend in 1989, Frank, Sharon, and Cheryl went on a boating trip together, where a fight broke out between Cheryl and Frank. Following the argument, Cheryl allegedly reported Sharon to Social Services for misrepresenting her true income as an exotic dancer. Sharon had been hiding some of the money she made to still get checks from the government, but Cheryl's call meant that Sharon no longer qualified for welfare aid.
Enraged by Cheryl's actions, Frank went to the club where Sharon and Cheryl both worked and confronted her just outside the business. Witnesses reported that Frank actually punched Cheryl in the face during the altercation. Shortly after, Cheryl left her father's house to travel to stay with a friend, but when she never called her dad to tell him that she had arrived safely, he reported her missing.
Her abandoned Corvette was discovered at the airport and an investigation ensued to find the missing woman. Both Frank and Sharon were seen as persons of interest but for years, no evidence ever arose to connect them to Cheryl's disappearance. The two quickly packed up and left the area, which only increased suspicion, especially since they started using different names as they traveled.
Frank and Sharon ended up getting married in 1989. And Frank claimed it was to give Sharon's son his family name to belong to, though the couple frequently went by different aliases. They ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Sharon was once again, working as an exotic dancer.
Sharon easily made friends everywhere the couple of went, but no one seemed to like Frank as he was aggressive and unpleasant. Reportedly, Frank once again, got into a fight with another dancer Sharon worked with, and when the woman yelled that Sharon should leave him, he responded, "If she ever left me, I'd kill the. " Little did Frank know, Sharon was making plans to leave him for a man she had met at the club where she worked.
Allegedly, Sharon would have left Frank earlier, but she was afraid of what he would do to her or her son, Michael. Before she was ever able to leave though, Sharon was the victim of a sudden accident. She was found unconscious by a highway and it appeared as though she had been the victim of a hit and run.
Frank claimed that he was asleep at the time of the accident. Though rushed to the hospital, Sharon never regained consciousness. Her friends from the club would come to visit her where she recovered, and many claimed that she was getting better, but Frank soon banned them from seeing her without explanation.
Five days after the incident, Sharon died from her injuries, but many were suspicious of Frank's strange actions, especially since Sharon seemed to be recovering before suddenly dying. The doctor was also suspicious and based off of old bruises he noticed on her body, he classified her death as a homicide and even said that the head injury that killed Sharon may not have been caused by a vehicle. Though no one could prove that Frank had been the one to run over Sharon, or that he had possibly killed her while in the hospital, many came to that same conclusion, especially when her coworkers had been the ones to pay for her headstone rather than Frank.
Frank soon contacted life insurance companies to claim the $80,000 policy he had taken out on Sharon only a few months prior to her death. The problem was that Frank frequently used aliases and so the social security numbers he provided never matched his name. After a few tries, he finally provided his real name, Frank Delano Floyd.
It was then that all of Frank's lies began to unravel. It turned out that he had quite the criminal history. When Frank was 19 in 1962, he was convicted of abducting and assaulting a four-year-old girl, which resulted in him being sentenced to serve 10 to 20 years in prison.
However, he escaped the mental hospital where he was first placed by stealing a vehicle. Frank's shocking story was only beginning as the day after his escape, he robbed a bank and was subsequently captured again. In 1972, Frank was released, but almost immediately he tried to abduct a woman from a gas station and was once again arrested.
This time however, he paid his bail, but skipped his court date. A federal warrant was issued for his arrest but he quickly vanished and began using fake names while on the run. That is until he finally had to give his real full name to the life insurance company.
Frank attempted to flee from authorities but he was soon captured in Georgia and placed in prison to finish his sentence. For the friends of Sharon, they felt that Frank's arrest was a way to serve justice to her untimely death. During this time, Frank had reportedly given Michael to Social Services before he went on the run, and Michael was soon put into the foster care system where he was placed with a loving family.
However, everyone was shocked by the little boy's behavior as he appeared to be non-verbal and what only scream and moan to communicate. Frank insisted he was Michael's father and so the child was frequently brought to visit him while incarcerated. When Michael showed hesitance to visit Frank, a DNA test was eventually performed.
Even though Frank initially resisted, it was discovered that despite what Frank said, Michael was not his biological child and so the visits were stopped. But this shocking story doesn't end here, and it was far from over. When Frank was finally released from prison in September of 1994 after serving four years, he started stalking Michael and his foster parents in Oklahoma.
He knew he would never be given custody of the child and so he devised a plan to take him. On September 12th, 1994, Frank showed up at Michael's elementary school and demanded to see the principal, James Davis. When he wasn't allowed to take Michael, Frank pulled out a gun and threatened Davis.
Michael was finally collected, all without alerting anyone at the school. And Frank forced the principal under gunpoint to take the two of them to an area a few miles from the school grounds. There, Frank tied Davis to a tree, leaving him unharmed, and fled with Michael in Davis's truck.
When the abduction was finally known, a frantic search began, but it would take two long months for anything to be discovered. Frank was found in Louisville, Kentucky and arrested, but there was no sign of Michael. Even after extensive searches, there was no trace of what had happened to the little boy and Frank refused to tell anyone.
Talking about Michael to the police, Frank stated, "It's none of your business where he is nor do I care how much any of you in Oklahoma miss him or love him. " The first of many twists was revealed during Frank's trial for kidnapping Michael. In 1995, skeletal remains were found covered in vines in Pinellas County, Florida.
The remains weren't immediately identified, but an investigation determined that the victim had died from a beating and two gunshot wounds to the head. Later that year, a mechanic in Kansas purchased a truck at an auction, and inside he found a large envelope filled with 97 photographs depicting a woman who had been beaten and bound. The truck had once been in the possession of Frank Floyd, who had stolen it while he was passing through the area in 1994, before eventually abandoning it.
The photos were compared to the unidentified remains, and a wound to the photographed woman's cheek bone matched one on the recovered skull. The skeleton was soon named as belonging to Cheryl Commesso. Frank was convicted for kidnapping Michael, who still hadn't been found, but was classified as missing, and he was consequently sentenced to 52 years in prison.
He then went on trial for the murder of Cheryl Commesso, where he was found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty. But the photos uncovered in the truck revealed something else even more shocking, bringing to light another twist in this case. The pictures also showed Frank assaulting a young girl, but these images were much older than the ones of Cheryl.
A search began to find the identity of the girl. This is where the case took an alarming turn. It wasn't until 2014, that Sharon's true identity was officially uncovered.
To find the truth about Sharon and the pictures, we have to go back. After being released from prison, and while he was on the run for attempted abduction, Frank got married in the mid 1970s to Sandi Chipman. At the time he had used the alias Brandon Williams and so Sandi hadn't known who he really was.
The marriage was far from romantic, especially as it had begun with them tying the knot at a truck stop. Sandi had four kids at the time and she herself didn't have the cleanest record. She left her kids in Frank's care when she had to spend 30 days in jail after being caught passing bad checks.
When Sandi was finally released from prison, she found that her house was empty and her children gone. It appeared that Frank had taken them and moved. It took Sandi years to figure out where her children had ended up, but she eventually found two of her daughters, Alison and Amy, living with a social services group.
Despite this, Sandi couldn't locate her oldest daughter Suzanne, or her son Philip. Her son was eventually found when as a grown man, Phillip came forward and had a DNA test to reveal that they were related. Frank had put him up for adoption, but what happened to Sandi's oldest daughter is even more shocking.
Sharon Marshall's real name was Suzanne Marie Sevarkis, and she was the daughter of Sandi Chipman. In a truly alarming twist, Frank had taken Sandi's children and split them up over different social services groups, but raised Suzanne as his own daughter. Frank and Suzanne moved frequently and across several different states.
Frank told many different stories to those around him about how he had come to care for the young girl, but in most he claimed to have rescued her when she was abandoned by her parents. At this time, he was calling her by the alias of Tanya Hughes, yet by the time that the young girl graduated from high school, she was going by the name of Sharon Marshall. It turns out that Sharon was kidnapped as a child by Frank, her own stepfather, who raised her, frequently assaulted her, later married her when she was an adult, possibly killed her, and then kidnapped her child after she died.
It was a twist that investigators found too unbelievable to be real, and yet it was true. Also revealed in 2014, was that after almost 20 years of lies, Frank finally admitted to what many had suspected by this time, that he had murdered Michael by shooting him while on the run. He had hidden his body along Interstate 35, but an intensive search didn't reveal anything.
It was later concluded that Michael's body may have been eaten by wild hogs in the area. Frank Floyd was never found guilty of Sharon's murder, though popular consensus believes he is also guilty of this crime. To this day, he refuses to talk about Sharon's death.
Frank is still awaiting his penalty for Cheryl's murder on death row. Our next case as no less shocking or tragic. On August 24th, 1980, Gregory Villemin was born to his parents, Jean-Marie and Christine Villemin.
The family lived in Lepanges-sur-Vologne in eastern France, where Jean-Marie worked as a factory foreman after being promoted. The couple had just moved into a newly built home, soon before welcoming their bright baby boy. By all accounts, the family was happy and successful, but then things took a startling turn.
The Villemin family began receiving anonymous threatening letters and phone calls, promising revenge against Jean-Marie. The letters and calls never specified what the sender wanted revenge for, only that they were seeking it. Over four years, the threats continued and expanded to include Jean-Marie's parents as well.
Then on October 16th, 1984, while playing in the garden, four-year-old Gregory disappeared. Christine quickly noticed that her son wasn't on the front yard anymore and called the police. As the police began their search, Christine drove around the nearby small village in a panic.
No trace of the four-year-old could be found. As the search continued, Gregory's uncle received an anonymous phone call that stated, "I've kidnapped the boy. I've strangled him and I've thrown him in the river Vologne.
I have my revenge. " The next day before anything could be further explored, Jean-Marie found a letter that appeared to be posted to them at the time Gregory was taken. It read, "I hope you die of grief, boss.
Your money won't bring back your son. Here's my revenge, you. " Gregory's body was found later that day near Docelles and the Vologne River, only seven kilometers from his home.
He had been drowned with his hands and feet bound, and his wool hat pulled over his face. His family was absolutely devastated. The case of Gregory's murder, which horrified the French public, became known as the l'affaire de Gregory.
The killer was soon referred to as Le Corbeau, or the Crow, based off of a famous French film that had a similar theme to the threatening notes the family had received. After intense investigation, police had a suspect narrowed down by handwriting experts who analyzed the ominous letters and a key witness statement. In 1985, Bernard Laroche, Jean-Marie's cousin was arrested and questioned based on a statement from his 15-year-old sister-in-law.
But Laroche denied being the Crow, and soon his sister-in-law took back her statement saying that it had been coerced. Even though Laroche was eventually cleared and freed, Jean-Marie stood in front of reporters and made a vow that he believed Laroche was guilty of murdering his son and that he would kill him. But the case took another shocking twist on March 25th, 1985 when the handwriting experts determined that Gregory's own mother Christine, may have written the threatening letters.
Only four days later, Jean-Marie went to Laroche's work, determined to avenge the death of his son, and not believing that his wife was guilty. There, he shot and killed his own cousin as he was leaving the building. Jean-Marie was convicted of murder and sentenced to five years in prison.
In July of the same year, Christine was charged with the murder of their son. She was pregnant with twins at the time, but went on a hunger strike to protest her innocence. For 11 days she refused to eat and she was eventually freed after an appeal found that she had been convicted with flimsy evidence and no real motive.
However, Christine's tragedy wasn't over yet. As she was released, she collapsed and reportedly miscarried one of her babies. She wasn't officially cleared of all charges until 1993.
And Jean-Marie was released from prison after serving only two-and-a-half years in 1987. After so much turmoil, the Villemin family was still no closer to knowing who had killed Gregory. For decades after Gregory's death, the case continued to haunt France and was reopened and reexamined, with tests done to the letters, the rope used to bind him, and DNA testing on Gregory's clothing, and the saliva on the stamps used to post the letters, but it was no use.
All was found to be inconclusive. In 2017, the case was once again reopened, and this time there was new evidence which resulted in three arrests, once again, shocking France. Gregory's great aunt, great uncle, and his aunt were taken in for questioning, along with others, including more family members.
The aunt was eventually released, but the great aunt and great uncle refused to speak to police at all. None were convicted. A different tragedy soon struck when the magistrate Jean-Michel Lambert, who was in charge of the first investigation, took his own life because of the pressure and criticism he faced with the case still being unsolved, 33 years after Gregory's death.
The why of Gregory's death has never been answered but some site jealousy within the Villemin family as a possible cause. And others suggest that the fact that the letters called Jean-Marie boss could mean it had to do with his work. Either way, no real evidence or suspect has been found but almost everyone in the family has been under suspicion at some point.
In December of 2020, the case was once again reopened, but this time police are determined to uncover the real identity of the Crow once and for all. New interviews have been conducted and police are relying on a brand new technology called stylometrics, which looks at the style, syntax, punctuation, and turns of phrase used in the threatening letters to identify the killer. A new suspect has been identified, but so far has not yet been named.
It appears that the murder of Gregory Villemin may soon be solved. Our next case is not a normal missing persons case and has a twist that seems too surprising to possibly be true, and yet it is. Nicholas Barclay was born December 31st, 1980, as the youngest to two older siblings.
He had a rather normal childhood in San Antonio, Texas, but as a preteen, he started to develop a reputation as a troubled kid. Nicholas was known to have a history of fighting physically and verbally with his mother, skipping school, threatening his teachers, stealing shoes, and even breaking into a convenience store. By only 13, Nicholas had a juvenile criminal record for his antics, and allegedly three tattoos that his friends had given him with an unsterilized needle.
At some point, Nicholas was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. His mother was reportedly so exasperated with his demanding supervision, that she asked her older son Jason to come and live with her to aid in the young boy's caretaking. On June 13th, 1994, Nicholas called home looking for someone to pick him up after playing basketball in his neighborhood.
His older brother Jason answered the phone, but refused to wake up their mother who had been working late nights, and instead told Nicholas to walk home. But he never arrived. Unfortunately, with Nicholas's reputation, few believed something was wrong when the 13-year-old couldn't be found.
Most were inclined to believe he had run away and he would return at some point soon. This theory was given credence by the fact that the day after he vanished he had a court hearing to decide if he would be sent to a rehabilitation center. But still, after not returning for longer than normal, and with his mother's pleading, an investigation to find Nicholas was finally started.
For months there was no sign of him. The only clue was three months after Nicholas's disappearance when Jason called the police to say that he could hear his younger brother breaking into their garage, yet when police arrived, there was no evidence of forced entry, nor any sign of Nicholas, but they couldn't understand why Jason would lie about such a thing. After years passed, the Barclay family started to come to terms with the fact that they may never see Nicholas again.
That is until this case took a surprising and unusual turn. Few missing children's cases end in the child being found, and yet in 1997, three years after he went missing, the Barclay family was told that Nicholas had been found alive and safe. Despite this joyous news, there was something rather strange about the phone call.
Nicholas was said to have been found in Linares, Spain after having been taken by a child trafficking ring that had moved him all the way to Europe. After years of being held captive, Nicholas had managed to escape. The police told the Barclays that Nicholas had been forced to speak only French for the three years he was gone, and had been hurt during his time away from them.
Carey, Nicholas's, his older sister, flew to Spain to identify and retrieve her missing brother. Things did not go as planned though, as Nicholas appeared afraid of his sister, especially the fact that she might not recognize him and force him to remain in Spain. When he finally allowed Carey to come and see him, he kept a baseball hat and sunglasses on.
Yet Carey said that she knew he was her brother. The two spent some time together to get reacquainted as Nicholas claimed that he had very little recollection of his life before being taken as his mind had blocked it out as an emotional response. When Carey showed him family photos, Nicholas appeared to remember certain things and people, such as asking her if, "Grandpa was still an.
" Before he was allowed to return home with Carey though, Nicholas had to pass a test where the police showed him family photos that Carey hadn't gone over with him and he had to correctly identify the people in them. Nicholas only made one small mistake, and so he was allowed to return home to Texas with Carey. Even though the Barclays were delighted to finally have Nicholas back, there were a few things that they couldn't ignore.
One being the most obvious, which was the fact that their brother had been blonde with blue eyes when he was taken, but the boy who came back from Spain had dark hair and brown eyes. Nicholas had an extraordinary explanation for his change in appearance. He said that to keep his identity a secret, the people who had taken him had performed experiments to change his hair and eye color so that no one would recognize him as Nicholas.
He also spoke with a heavy French accent, but this was explained away with his story of being forced to only speak French for the three years. The family was so relieved to finally have Nicholas home that they actively ignored some of the things authorities raised concerns about, and even told investigators to close the case. A film crew heard about the amazing story and asked to follow the Barclays around to document how Nicholas was adjusting to returning to his family.
They agreed and that was when everything started to fall apart. A local private detective was working with the crew and became increasingly suspicious of the French-speaking, dark-haired Nicholas. He began his own investigation and took a picture of Nicholas's ears to compare to earlier photos.
He found that they didn't match, and as ears don't age or change, he took his concerns to the authorities. By February of 1998, after Nicholas was back living with the Barclays for five months, the FBI became involved when they obtained a court order to investigate. When Nicholas's fingerprints and DNA were taken, it was determined that the man the Barclays believed to be their Nicholas, was actually a 23-year-old Frenchmen named Frederic Pierre Bourdin.
Frederic was a notorious con artist with over 500 different identities and the nickname The Chameleon. Despite this shocking revelation, the Barclays refused to believe that Frederic wasn't Nicholas, even when in court Frederic admitted to being an impostor and pleaded guilty to passport fraud and perjury. He was imprisoned for six years.
Questions swirled around this revelation. Where was the real Nicholas? How had the Barclays been fooled?
And why did Frederic do it? Though this case is utterly shocking, the imposter is not the only twist. Investigators were concerned by the Barclay's behavior during the entire incident and their willful acceptance of Frederic.
Frederic himself later weighed into the controversy, saying that even he couldn't believe that the Barclays accepted him so easily, rousing even more suspicion of the family. Frederic even claimed that the Barclays knew he wasn't Nicholas, but that they had all pretended and played along with his scheme. And he couldn't understand why.
He reported that when he met Carey, she had fed him knowledge about the family, telling him who everyone was and what to remember. She had allegedly helped him pass the police's test before being allowed to go to the US. Frederic also said that Jason had never accepted him nor pretended to.
In fact, all he had said to Frederic upon meeting him was good luck. The phone call Jason had made three months after Nicholas disappeared, suddenly became a clue, as police said that those types of calls aren't unusual when someone has been murdered, as the murderer often attempts to make it seem like the victim may still be alive after killing them. And this is exactly what the private investigator and Frederic believe happened.
He believes that the family accepted him so willingly because they had killed Nicholas, or Jason had, and were more than happy to cover it up by claiming he was the real Nicholas. Before Jason could be investigated, he died from a drug overdose. It is reported that he had long been battling a cocaine addiction.
No other evidence appeared and the case went cold. Frederic finished his jail sentence and went on continuing to steal identities across Europe. Nicholas has still never been found, but his story has inspired the popular Netflix documentary "The Imposter.
