Hi, I haven't been in here for awhile.Life happened.I never stopped researching this case.
I believe Michael is dead,after reading this.I think Floyd did express to his sister Dorothea Leonard the truth about what happened to Michael.But she claims to know how Michael - whose whereabouts remain unknown - was murdered during the kidnapping three years ago.Her brother, Franklin Delano Floyd, confessed to her in a telephone call from the county jail that he drowned the first-grader in a motel bathtub, she said. Floyd told his sister he dunked the 45-pound boy under the bath water, allowing him to surface three times to angrily ask the "brat" whether he loved him. The brown haired boy initially shoved Floyd and said no. After Michael repeatedly refused to say yes, he was killed for it, she said."If Michael's dead, then he deserves to pay for Michael's death, and not with the comfort of sitting in prison till he dies," Leonard said."I want him to be put to death. I think he should die just like Michael did." Nonetheless, agents never found Michael's body or other hard evidence of a slaying, despite separate searches of waterways and a cemetery where witnesses said Michael's body may have been hidden. She had sent him books and was also taking his calls in hopes that her brother would tell her where Michael was. Floyd had been telling authorities that he handed over Michael to people in a foreign country who were caring for him. "He said that he had taken Michael places to have a good time, and Michael got tired and wanted to go home," Leonard said. "And that he cries all the time. That he couldn't shut the brat up."
Floyd told her he got a motel room, and told Michael to take off his clothes for a bath, she said.
"Michael took off all his clothes, and he told him to lie down on his stomach in the tub while the water was still running. And Michael turned around and says, `Why are you taking off your clothes, too?' "
"He said, `Because we're going to play games together.' He said he got into the tub with Michael and Michael was hollering, `No, get out, get out!' "
Leonard said Floyd told her that he began pressing Michael to say he loved him. "He said, `Michael, do you love me?' And Michael said `No.' "
She said Floyd pushed the boy's head underwater, then let him come up for air, and again the child refused to say he loved Floyd. Floyd said he dunked the boy's head again, but Michael still refused to say the words Floyd wanted to hear. Leonard said her brother told her the third time he pushed Michael's head into the water he held it there until the boy drowned.
Leonard told the FBI that Floyd told her he "discarded the little son of a ... ," an investigation report said.
Leonard said she was in a state of shock from her brother's confession.
"I remember him telling me that he got him out of the tub, and that he took him and put him in the trunk of the car, and he got rid of him," she said.
Leonard's husband came home and had to "bring her around" out of shock, she said. "I started screaming and hollering, telling him what Franklin had told me," she said.
Floyd has never told her where the motel was or where he allegedly took Micheal's body, she said. But she said another person linked to Floyd during the kidnapping claims to have seen Floyd bury Michael in a cemetery she said.
A source close to the investigation said the cemetery, where Floyd's and Leonard's father is buried, was searched with no results."I don't think he tells me those things to upset me," she said. "I think when he told me he killed Michael he needed somebody to tell. And I think that I just happened to be the one that would take a phone call.
"He wanted Michael to love him, and Michael would not love him," she said. "Michael wanted to go home. That wasn't what Franklin could possibly live with." END.