‘Girl in the Picture’ (2022) Review: Exploring the Truth of a Woman’s Identity and the Murder of Her Son
TW: This article contains mentions of rape, sexual assault, kidnapping and murder.
Like most of the true-crime documentaries on Netflix, Skye Borgman’s (Abducted in Plain Sight, Dead Asleep) Girl in the Picture is based on real-life incidents about a young mother’s mysterious death and the kidnapping of her son that leads to a decades-long investigation explorings the true identity of the woman. During the investigation, the figure at the centre was the man who claimed to be her husband, who reveals to have a history of violence against women and kidnapping of young girls. Girl in the Picture is a disturbing and stomach-churning true crime documentary that tells the story of a young mother that lived a life of prolonged abuse and captivity and died under mysterious circumstances.
In 1990, Tonya Dawn Hughes was involved in a hit-and-run accident. After she is rushed to the hospital, they begin to examine her body and notice old bruises and they are suspicious that she might be involved with domestic violence. Her husband, Clarence, bares visitors from visiting her and informs the doctors that she is a stripper and they have a son named Michael. After Tonya passes away, her friends try to inform her parents about her death, to which they find out that the person named “Tonya Dawn Hughes” died 20 years ago. The mystery that looms in the documentary is, who is this woman and what is her real name?
Through interviews with her friends from the strip club and high school, the documentary reveals the life Tonya lived with her son and husband. To paint the picture of who Tonya was as a person to her friends, her friends described that she loved her son but lived in fear of her husband. She had bruises on her body, which she dismissed as “falling down the stairs.” She lived in a household, where Clarence controlled every aspect of her life, from where she would work and her friendships, and she wasn’t allowed to go out with Michael. After the accident, her friend visited the hospital, where she learned that this accident might be foul play. Everything about the situation didn’t seem right to her, so Michael was put in a foster home to protect him from Clarence. The next turn of events blows open an investigation of a kidnapped child and turns into the discovery of more stories by people who witnessed the true nature of Clarence and his relationship with Tonya.
Girl in the Picture reveals that before Clarence and Tonya moved to a new city, they had different aliases and a completely different relationship. Clarence was under the alias Warren Marshall, and the viewers learned that he had many other aliases, while Tonya was Sharon Marshall, and she was his daughter. At school, she was in many programs and dreamed of wanting to be an aerospace engineer at Georgia Tech, but her dreams were crushed. After she got pregnant, Warren refused to let her go to college and she stayed back. In one instance, another close friend of Sharon witnessed Warren walk into the bedroom with a gun and rape Sharon right in front of her. These instances of abuse continued and when Sharon became friends with Cheryl Ann Commesso, a fellow stripper at her workplace, Warren sexually assaulted her and she mysteriously disappeared.
The documentary switches back and forth, interviewing the FBI agents, investigators, reporters, and authors, to determine the story behind Clarence/Warren. It glosses over his history of abuse in the family and how he grew up in a different home, where he was subject to abuse and rape by older people. It is important to understand the psyche of the murderer, the problem with true crime documentaries is that it tries to discuss the killer more than the victim. Girl in the Picture leans more toward the voices of the people who witnessed the abuse towards Sharon/Tonya, and it builds her story and discusses Michael’s whereabouts. Even when the documentary shows videos of Clarence/Warren’s testimonies of how much he cares for Michael and his sadness over the death of Sharon/Tonya, Borgman never lets the viewer forget he is the antagonist. As more secrets and aliases are discovered and hit a dead end, a new chapter opens up.
Eventually, the documentary gets the true identities of Sharon/Tonya and Clarence/Warren. At the age of five, Suzanne Marie Sevakis (aliases Sharon Marshall and Tonya Hughes) was kidnapped by her stepfather Franklin Delano Floyd (aliases Warren Marshall and Clarence Hughes). Her mother Sandi married Franklin with the hope that he would provide for her kids, but it soon turned into a nightmare. In 1975, while Sandi was jailed for passing bad cheques at a grocery store while trying to buy diapers for her young children, Franklin disappeared with the children, and eventually took Suzanne with him from state to state across America.
Borgman attempts to investigate the murder of Suzanne and the kidnapping of Michael, however, the latter gets lost in the middle of everything. The documentary leads towards a non-linear structure, which makes Michael’s case pushed back to the second half. It is understandable that the true identity of Suzanne, her murder, and the witness’s stories are integral to structuring the narrative, but in the first half of the documentary, there was an urgency to find out his location. The two people that the documentary focuses on are Suzanne and Michael, but while it builds up Franklin’s story and his arrest, perhaps the documentary could have worked better by fleshing out the details in a two-part series. Eventually, the story leads to Michael’s whereabouts, and if there was a hopeful outcome to it, it was too late for that.
Girl in the Picture paints the brutal life of Suzanne and the subsequent kidnapping of her son. It’s a heart-wrenching documentary of a young woman and her child’s lives being taken too early by the hands of a terrible person. The documentary concludes with her mysterious death and true identity, and other findings, which won’t be revealed in the review. Regrets, tears, and changes were made to make up for the time that was lost, especially Suzanne’s family that didn’t seem to make much of an effort to find her. In one of the interviews, a woman questions why Sandi never attempted to find her kidnapped daughter, and that is the question that looms in the air.
Girl in the Picture streams on Netflix on July 6th.
Edited by: Raayaa Imthiyaz
