Francine Hughes and "The Burning Bed"

I was twelve years old in 1984 when the movie “The Burning Bed” aired on television. It was based on the book of the same name by Faith McNulty. The Burning Bed was the story of Francine Hughes, a woman who had spent more than a decade being abused by her husband with little help from authorities. On the night of March 9, 1977 in Dansville Michigan Francine told her three children that were home to put on their coats and wait for her in the car. Once they were gone Francine poured gasoline around the bed in which her ex-husband, James “Mickey” Hughes, laid passed out from his latest drunken bender. Francine then lit a match, set the bed on fire and met her children in the car. She watched for a few minutes as her home began to burn and then she drove herself to the local police department and confessed to what she had done. In fact, by all accounts she was confessing before the fire department would even get to the scene and attempt to put the fire out. Once it was the body of Mickey Hughes would be found and Francine would be arrested and charged with first degree murder.

Francine had grown up in a home with an alcoholic father who physically abused her mother. Whether he also abused any of his six children is not clear but the home was apparently full of drama and chaos. Francine dropped out of school and at sixteen she begged her parents to sign the paperwork to allow her to marry eighteen year old “Mickey.” The young couple moved in with his parents. Francine would say that the abuse started just a few weeks after their marriage. She said the first incident came about after she had bought some new clothes. She was not sure what was particularly wrong with them but Mickey had ripped them off of her, beating her in the process and expressed she was not to wear clothing like that. As is the case in many who abuse their partners, Mickey express regret and swore it would never happen again.

Soon the couple would have their first child, a daughter Christy. Three more children would follow, Jimmy in 1966, Dana in 1969 and Nicole in 1971. Over the years Mickey had trouble maintaining a job and when he did have one he often failed to pay the bills. Off and on they continued to live with his parents but also there were times that they had a place of their own. When Francine was pregnant with Nicole they were at a point in which they had no food or money to pay the rent and Francine went to the welfare department to seek help. A social worker suggested that she file for divorce so that she could qualify for benefits. Although the divorce was granted in April of 1971 Mickey had little interest in acknowledging it, still coming and going as he pleased, pretty much as he always had.

In the summer of 1971 Mickey was in a horrible car accident that left him with several broken bones and a head injury. He was in a coma for a period of time and when he awoke the first person he asked for was Francine. He remained in the hospital for more than a month and Francine would later say that she visited out of guilt and that guilt also caused her to allow him to come to her home to help nurse him. He of course, as he had been for many years remorseful for the abuse he had put Francine and it seems she bought it again. This however is when she says things got worse than ever.

It is not clear how many times the police were called to the Hughes' home or even if they were at all aside from a few hours prior to Francine ending it all. Most argued then, and now, that it would have made little difference anyway. Police officers did very little when it came to domestic violence then. While we may argue that today, in 2020, it is one of the most common crime as well as one of the least reported, in the 1970's it was worse. In fact, in 1976 a New York City Councilman, Leon Katz, was quoted as saying, “Do we break up a marriage simply because a man beats his wife?” That was pretty much the belief in those days. That being said, it was not necessarily as bad as it had been in decades prior to that when the overwhelming idea was that basically a man had the right to beat his wife to “keep her in line” or that she had obviously done something to “deserve it.” By the 70's people either “minded their own business” and ignored it or distanced themselves from those situations when it involved people they knew. Even still when law enforcement was called they generally did nothing about it saying they had seen nothing and could do nothing. The abused often already knew this and they also knew that calling law enforcement would only make their abuser angry. The first safe house for domestic violence victims was open in 1971 in London; the first rape crisis line opened in 1972 but neither were widespread, nor was the open concept that domestic violence was a huge issues. Women who did attempt to leave generally had few places to go and little money to get and stay there. Then the men would find them and sometimes literally “drag” them back. To add to this many women only had one place to go, back to their parents' home. They went to the homes of women of a generation who still lived by the belief that you stayed married no matter what and were still buying into the sad sorry stories the abuser gave. They would often convince their daughters to return whether because that is what they truly believed they should do or sometimes because they just did not want more drama at their own homes.

By 1977 Francine had obtained her GED and was taking secretarial courses at a community college. On March 9, 1977 the fighting continued. Mickey did not like that she was taking the courses, nor does it appear that he ever liked that for Francine the children came before he did. He kept insisting that she quit school and while she had been through this enough to know that fighting back was something that made things worse she did resist him. By the time it was over Mickey had ripped the books up and she finally relented when he forced her to burn them. He had also threatened to take a sledgehammer to her car so she would not be able to get to school. At some point she made dinner that night and he had thrown it on the floor, forced her to clean it up, then poured and smeared trash on the floor and made her clean that up too. Then he ordered her to cook another meal. Throughout all of this Mickey was physically beating her.

It is unclear at what point during that day that the police were called, but they were. But, they left without doing anything saying they had not seen anything to prove that what Francine was alleging was true. Because I do not know when they were called I cannot say if there was any or how much physical evidence on Francine and I cannot say if that would have made a difference. Officers would later confirm that while they were there though Mickey had looked at Francine and told her “it was all over” because she had involved the police. But still, they did nothing.

After forcing her to cook another meal, Francine claimed that he then forced her to have sex in their bedroom. When it was over he had passed out and she said she had a “voice” telling her to “do it” and get it over with. This was her chance to get away forever from Mickey. This is when she made the decision to surround the bed with gasoline and set it on fire.

Francine was arrested and charged in the murder. She claims that while in jail she received a card from one of Mickey's brothers that said “You're next.” His family staunchly defended Mickey, claiming that Francine's allegations were lies. In 1979 one of Mickey's other brothers committed suicide. The family claims that this was a result of Mickey's death.

Francine's case is considered to be one of the first to use what would later be called The Battered Woman's Syndrome. Even the prosecutor agreed that her “plight was sympathetic” but their position was that she had murdered a man who had no way of defending himself and their claim was they were following the law by charging her and taking her case to trial. The jury of ten women and two men would deliberate for five hours and ultimately find her not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. After spending nine months in jail she was released twelve days after the verdict as she was required to pass a psychological exam before being released.

Then in 1980 Faith McNulty released her book, “Burning Bed.” Francine received a large advance for the book that helped her make a down payment on a house. Francine's case had already helped bring light to domestic violence and the publishing of the book, and then the movie in 1984 brought it even more into the forefront. It became known as “The Burning Bed Syndrome” and is or was studied in colleges and used as a defense in many other cases.

By 1984 when the movie was coming out and would bring critical acclaim to Farrah Fawcett who would play Francine in the movie it looked like Francine's life was getting better. She was going to nursing school. She had even remarried to a man named Robert Wilson. Now, everything you find when you first hear about Robert is that when they met he had recently been paroled after spending ten years in prison for armed robbery. It is my suspicion that this is always mentioned for two reasons. One is to show the type of man she ended up with and secondly was to put later allegations into perspective but without more knowledge of the complete situation and with my own experience and knowledge of things I feel as this was just an attempt to make more drama.

It was not made completely clear exactly where Francine's four children were living while she was in jail. Keep in mind that the movie version of her life, where many have said is way less accurate than the book, indicated she only had three children, leaving son, Dana out. I believe that this was probably done because Dana was the only one of her children not home the night of the murder as he was visiting a friend. It is much like how movies will combine people in non-fiction stories. One of the most famous is the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. The couple had several different men who had worked with them on several different “jobs.” The writers of the story combined all of them to create a character. Francine would later say that her incarceration made it difficult to maintain good relationships with her children and that once she was released a few other things came into play that delayed the repairing of those relationships.

No one can argue that Francine's children did not have a difficult childhood. Oldest daughter, Christy was twelve when her mother set her father on fire. She would later say “I spit on his grave. He was a rotten son of a bitch.” Being the oldest she obviously saw and remembered more than the other children. Then they had to go through their mother being incarcerated, the break up of their family since by all accounts Mickey's family denied Francine's version of things. Then suddenly a year later not only is she back full time in their lives but she's also at a point she had never been in her life. She had been married since she was sixteen years old. She was now a free, woman and a single mother of four at that. Francine admits that there was a short period that she was “wild” and involved in drugs and alcohol herself and no matter how short of a period that was for her, it surely seemed longer for her children. To add to this I have seen multiple women who have been single parents, myself included, and while most of us try our best the reality is that sometimes we are “just too tired” and admittedly we allow our children to get away with things that we would not normally do so if we had a little more support from someone else in our lives that helps take the burdens off of us. Oftentimes that involves a new man who will come in and start taking some control. The children are not always receptive and many times neither are the grandparents of the children. According to Robert when he met Francine the kids were “out of control,” particularly the girls, and I am unsure that I cannot argue that this was not the case at least at some level.

Not long after their marriage began Francine and Robert moved to Tennessee where Robert was from. Christy, who was sixteen at the time, says she moved out of the house because of Robert. She claimed the two could not get along. She then went to Florida with a boyfriend and when Francine discovered this forced her back to Tennessee where she lived for about a year before moving back to Michigan.

In June of 1984 DCF in Tennessee claim they got an anonymous tip asking them to investigate the Wilson home about the abuse of a 13 year old at the house. By all accounts this involved Nicole. It was later alleged that Robert “tried” to touch Nicole. He denied the allegation. The caseworker allegedly showed up at the house but did not get out of the car because of dogs on the property. The caseworker stated that an hour later Francine called the caseworker saying she was taking the child to Michigan. This raised suspicions as it was done so quickly. Apparently not only did Francine take Nicole to Michigan but she left the boys with Robert and she signed a long term lease at a place there. She would go to Tennessee to visit and Robert would visit Michigan with the boys. At some point Jimmy stayed with Francine in Michigan while Dana remained with Robert saying he was the only father he knew. It is not clear how long this arrangement took place but it appears the couple never divorced.

Robert died in 2015 and on March 22, 2017 Francine would die at the age of sixty-nine in Sheffield Alabama of complications of pneumonia. At the time of her death it was reported that she had ten grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Here are a few side notes. It was reported that the writers of the song Independence Day, sung by Martina McBride is about Francine's case. Secondly, in 2019 Francine's now retired defense attorney did an interview about the case. He basically encouraged people to read the book, saying it was an accurate depiction of Francine's situation but stated that the movie was loose on the facts. Now, in fairness one of his arguments was that the movie was filmed in Texas and California while the case took place in the northern state of Michigan and so the weather and other things were not accurate, I am unsure that can be a huge thing to argue about. At the time the movie was released Mickey's family was interviewed and they stated that they refused to watch the movie.