A Beautiful Child

A Beautiful Child (ISBN 978-0425204405) was published in America in 2004 and in paperback in 2005. It tells the story of a young woman known by many names, including Sharon Marshall, who was kidnapped as a toddler and raised by a convicted felon, Franklin Delano Floyd. Written by author Matt Birkbeck, A Beautiful Child spurred numerous web sites dedicated to finding Sharon's true identity. Through suggestions from those sites, Birkbeck, in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, have conducted DNA testing on relatives of several girls who went missing in the early 1970s. Until recently, no matches had been found and Sharon's identity remained a mystery.[1][2][3]

In July 2014, DNA testing positively identified Sharon as Suzanne Sevakis, the daughter of a woman Floyd briefly married in the mid-1970s. Floyd kidnapped Suzanne and her siblings when their mother was incarcerated for 30 days for writing a bad check to buy diapers. One of the siblings were later recovered and the second never found, but the family could never find Suzanne despite a lifetime of searching. Suzanne's son Michael, after being kidnapped from his elementary school by Floyd, has never been located, but recent interviews with Floyd suggest that Floyd murdered Michael.[4]