Question for Michigan officials and legislators:
The Francine Hughes domestic violence case led Michigan legislators to enact domestic violence laws. How many OIDV cases and murders will it take for officials/legislators to take actions to protect victims of OIDV? Below is a list of Michigan OIDV deaths - do we have enough yet, to count/be worthy of OIDV laws and policies?
The Burning Bed 1984 - Full Movie
OIDV MURDERS
02082007 - Detroit Police Officer Brian Vieau - Murder/Suicide - Murdered estranged wife Tracy Vieau
UNSOLVED DEATHS:
ATTEMPT TO COMMIT MURDER
FIRED GUN/HELD VICTIM AT GUNPOINT: NOT CHARGED WITH INTENT TO COMMIT MURDER
"The Burning Bed": A turning point in fight against domestic violence
Lansing State Journal
Oct 27, 2014
Originally published in 2009
DANSVILLE - It was October 1984. Inside the Wooden Nickel Saloon, 50 or more people jostled for a place to sit for the best view of the televisions.
A little dot of a town on the southern edge of Ingham County, it was unheard of for Hollywood to pay attention to anything that happened here. But on this night, the town's dirty laundry was about to be aired on NBC, and no one wanted to miss it.
Little did they know that a movie about a crime in their small town would make waves far beyond the cornfields cradling its borders, but advocates say that's exactly what happened.
"The Burning Bed" told the story of Francine Hughes, a local woman who, seven years earlier, had been acquitted of murder after she poured gasoline around her sleeping ex-husband, James "Mickey" Hughes, and set him on fire.
Her trial was one of the most sensational in Ingham County's history. It revealed more than 12 years of abuse in the Hughes household, a case of such brutal spousal violence that it quickly became the rallying point for a growing movement to change domestic violence laws.
But it was the movie that largely changed societal attitudes.
The images of America's favorite "Charlie's Angel" - the late Farrah Fawcett - being beaten and bloodied, brought the issue of domestic violence literally into the nation's living rooms, said Susan Shoultz, executive director of EVE Inc., a local nonprofit that serves domestic violence victims.
Now, 25 years later, advocates like Shoultz celebrate the movie as a turning point in the fight against domestic violence. But for the real people behind the TV drama, the anniversary is one more reminder of a tragedy from which they never fully recovered.
The Wooden Nickel is a dimly lit throwback to a time before the term "bedroom community" would be over-used to describe places like Dansville.
The town's social heartbeat for decades, ownership of the bar has changed over the years but not the traditions. It's the kind of place where the food is fried, the beer is domestic and the memories are long.
Long enough, said current owner Larry Arnett, that folks quickly lost interest in the movie that night 25 years ago. When you lived through the real thing and knew the real people, he said, the Hollywood version seemed just plain offensive.
There were inaccuracies, to be sure. Mickey and Francine had four children, but the movie included only three. The timeline of events was different, and some of the complexities of their relationship were glossed over or omitted entirely.
"People started shaking their heads right away," Arnett said. "We started with 50 people watching, but pretty soon everyone was just drinking beer, saying, 'This is bullshit.' "
Arnett is admittedly biased. Mickey Hughes and his brothers were among his best friends.
The Mickey portrayed in the movie wasn't the man Arnett said he knew. And he said the violence in the relationship wasn't nearly as one-sided as the movie suggested.
"He got knocked down as much as she did. I remember one night the two of them got into it right out here," he said, nodding toward the door. "She was beating on him. We had to pull them apart. They were both in the wrong."
He said one of the Hughes brothers came into the bar after Mickey's funeral.
"I remember he was real upset. He said, 'She's gonna get away with murder.' And she did. She got away with murder."
That's not how women's rights advocates saw it. Not then - and not today.
In 1977, Susan Shoultz was working in a program for single women and children, some of whom had been victims of domestic violence.
"The case was appalling to everyone," she said. "It was frightening to think of the horrors that went on in that household. It didn't have to end that way, but why did it? Because we had no way in."
The before and after snapshot is clear. From police procedure to victims' shelters, the way we deal with domestic abuse today is a far cry from the days when Francine Hughes tried and failed to get help.
Today, we take shelters for granted. There were few, if any, back then.
Today, police can and usually do arrest batterers when they're called to the scene of a domestic assault. Back then, the law didn't allow police to make an arrest unless they actually witnessed the assault.
Today, intervention programs work with accused and convicted batterers to try and end the violence. Back then, it was unheard of.
Today, victims can obtain personal protection orders to force their abusers to stay away. Back then, Francine couldn't get Mickey to leave even after she was granted a divorce.
Advocates like Shoultz already knew of the frustrating lack of support available to domestic violence victims. But even after Francine's trial, she said it was like activists were simply talking to one another.
After the movie, everyone else was willing to listen.
"It mobilized people," she said. "The movie was so graphic, and that moved things forward. ... Public awareness jumped leaps and bounds at that moment."
Mickey Hughes is buried in Stockbridge.
Etched into a pale pink gravestone, the image of Jesus prays over him. Next to him is his brother, Donovan. And a few feet away are his parents, Berlin and Flossie.
The years have been hard for the Hughes family, said Betty Phillips, a cousin. She still lives in Stockbridge, where she works with special needs students and coaches cheerleading.
Donovan and Berlin both committed suicide, she said. They just couldn't live with the grief. It's hard to lose a family member, she said. Hard to be part of a family with such a black mark on its name. Hard to reconcile the good memories with the bad.
"Our family has never denied the violence, but if he could've gotten help, it would have made a difference," she said. "A lot of the things in the movie really did happen. But did he deserve to die? No. The system failed both of them."
She remembers the night it happened. She remembers driving to Dansville and sitting in the house where Berlin and Flossie lived, right next door to Mickey and Francine.
"You know, I have never given any real thought to how he actually died," she said, her eyes watery. "But today, thinking about all this again, it just sort of hit me. He burned alive."
Time takes care of the hurt, Phillips said. She's no longer angry at Francine. And while she didn't like the movie, she hopes it made a difference for other people.
"I know that it opened a lot of eyes," she said. "We don't want any more violent deaths. But on the other hand, why us? Why did it have to be our family?"
Francine Hughes is done talking about it.
The woman who inspired a bestselling book, a movie, a folk song and a massive hit for country star Martina McBride ("Independence Day") doesn't want to do any more interviews about the tragedy that gave her a sort of folk-hero status.
That's according to her family. Francine won't take calls from a reporter.
Her sister, Diane Griffin of Jackson, wasn't all that crazy about hearing from one, either.
"We're a very private family, and it's just not something we discuss," Griffin said, a cautious, weary edge to her voice. "It's something that happened. We dealt with it, and it's behind us."
Francine remarried years ago. She lives in Alabama and her last name is Wilson, according to her brother, Dave Moran, who still lives in the Jackson house where Francine and her siblings grew up. The four Hughes kids are all grown and have moved away, although neither the sister nor brother could or would say where they live now.
The only other thing Griffin would say is that people often tell her that Francine's story still makes a difference.
"That movie has helped a lot of people," she said. "We've all survived, and we do the best we can."
The man's body was still in the garage, decomposing in the sticky heat of a Florida July. Attorney Arjen Greydanus was shocked.
"You haven't even called the police?" he asked the dead man's wife.
"No," she said. "You were the first person I called."
Greydanus hadn't really wanted to fly from Michigan to Florida, but the woman had pleaded with him on the phone. "I killed my husband," he recalls her saying. "He abused me. Can you help me? Like you helped Francine Hughes?"
In the years following his notorious client's 1977 acquittal, Greydanus fielded calls from women throughout the country who claimed to be in situations similar to Francine's. He always listened, and sometimes he agreed to represent them.
But this one felt wrong. Truth be told, when measured against Francine Hughes, he never again came across a case that in his mind met the same level of sustained, all-encompassing brutality.
"Francine was probably the worst case of abuse," the Okemos attorney recalls of the Dansville mother of four.
"I think there were several cases where the application of force was greater, or the injuries were more severe. But the Francine Hughes case was characterized by the presence of violence in all aspects of her life over so many years."
Anyway, he finally told the woman in Florida, "No, I can't help you."
He turned the case over to a local attorney, boarded a plane back to Michigan and quietly returned to his job as an Ingham County defense attorney.
All the while he wondered, would the calls ever stop?
***
The thing people don't always understand about the man who defended Francine Hughes was that he didn't seek out her case. He was appointed by the court.
He was not part of an already-growing movement to provide better protections for domestic violence victims. He was not an advocate or, as he calls it, a political animal.
What he was, however, was newly self-employed. He had just left the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office because he didn't get along with the new man in charge, Peter Houk.
Greydanus was eager to get something high profile under his defense-attorney's belt, so he agreed to take on a case that, he says, several other lawyers had turned down.
He knew within minutes of meeting his client that Francine was far from your run-of-the-mill murder defendant. The story of abuse and cruelty she relayed was so vicious that prosecuting her seemed, in his mind, to betray all standards of common sense and human decency.
Clearly, he believed, she had done the only thing she could think of to save her life. Clearly, she had acted in self-defense.
But Greydanus was up against major legal and societal hurdles.
Self-defense had always been defined as an act to escape immediate danger; Francine had waited nearly three hours between the last beating and when she struck the match.
Greydanus knew that those hours could prove more significant to a jury than the years of abuse. Those hours could mean the difference between freedom and life in prison.
And if he was successful, those hours could represent a new line of defense for abused women all over the country.
"My primary goal was to get her acquitted on a self-defense theory, but seen through the eyes of a woman, not a man," he says. "I looked around and found two cases ... where a similar argument had been made. Both of those women were convicted, but it gave me some basis to start thinking that the test for when and how a woman can defend herself is different than with a male."
And in that, Greydanus knew this case was going to cause one hell of a ruckus.
***
A Time magazine article at the time, "A Killing Excuse," said that "lawmen" around the country were worried that this so-called battered woman's defense would result in a slew of women getting away with killing their husbands on some shaky claim that they were being beaten.
It hasn't really happened, according to women's advocacy groups.
As many as eight out of 10 battered women accused of killing their husbands in the United States are convicted or end up pleading guilty, according to The National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, a nonprofit resource and advocacy center for battered women.
Is that because American juries still aren't ready to accept a battered woman's defense? Or is it, as Greydanus has surmised, because Francine was not outrightly acquitted. The jury found her not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
Much to the outrage of local women's activists, Greydanus had suggested to the jury that if they couldn't find that Francine acted in self-defense, they could at least agree that she essentially had snapped that night in after years of abuse.
In the end, that's what the jury decided.
"I don't think the public was ready for a successful defense that a woman who leaves the scene after an act of violence can come back later and kill him," Greydanus says. "But at the same time, they felt bad for her and felt that this son-of-a-gun deserved what he got."
For the man who was one of the first attorneys to test the battered woman's defense, the jury's decision still weighs on his mind.
He wishes they had gone with an acquittal based on the self-defense argument. And, he can't help but wonder if, just maybe, that there really were women who got the idea from Francine's case to claim insanity after killing their husbands.
He thinks about that case in Florida. The one he turned down.
"I wondered if this was a woman who had heard about Francine and maybe ... " he drops the sentence, letting it hang. "I was just uncomfortable with it. But I do think there were some women who thought, 'Hey, it's not a totally dead-end street. There is some hope that if I have to react in this way, a jury will be sympathetic.'"
***
The calls did eventually stop.
Now semi-retired, Greydanus mostly handles civil cases when he's not enjoying his vacation home in Italy with his wife.
He said it has been probably 10 years since he's gotten a call from a woman who killed her husband.
"No one stays famous forever," he says.
Which, actually, is fine with him. He could have used the Francine Hughes case to land bigger things, a bigger name, a bigger career. There were people back then encouraging him to hire a publicist and do whatever he could to ride that wave.
That's not what he wanted.
Still, to have been part of a case that made a difference? That feels good. He's proud of that. He still has the picture of himself standing in front of the Michigan Capitol, watching then-Gov. William Milliken sign new legislation protecting domestic violence victims.
But it has been more than two decades since he has spoken to Francine. He thinks maybe she just wanted to move on, start over and not be constantly reminded of everything that happened.
"I hope she's well," he says. "I really liked her. I think she was a good person, and I think she was very thankful that she could live free all these years."
How a Murder Case Brought Domestic Violence to Light
The New Yorker
Jul 9, 2020
When Francine Hughes murdered her husband after enduring years of abuse, a debate about domestic violence was ignited, making her story both a high point and an aberration in how such cases would be handled in the years to come.
The burning bed was based on a true story | Francine Hughes | True Crime
JustBrianna JD
June 16, 2020
After years of abuse, Francine Hughes decided to take the law into her own hands. The Burning Bed was a movie and book released that was based on the true story of Francine's marriage.
Paul Le Mat & Richard Masure "Burning Bed" 1984
Bobbie Wygant Archive
June 02, 2020
Episode 019: True Crime Game Changers: Francine Hughes and The Burning Bed
Once Upon A Crime Podcast
Sep 17, 2019
An abused woman spends years being beaten and terrorized by her husband while police and others turn a blind eye. In desperation, she takes the law into her own hands.
Francine Hughes Wilson, abused Michigan wife who inspired 'The Burning Bed,' dies at 69
World News
March 31, 2017
For more than 12 years, Francine Hughes endured physical abuse at the hands of James "Mickey" Hughes.
It was 40 years ago March 9 that Hughes walked into the Ingham County Jail in Mason and confessed that, fearing for her life, she had set fire to her home in Dansville, where her ex-husband was sleeping.
On March 22, Francine Wilson — she had remarried and taken the last name of her second husband Robert Wilson — died after a bout with pneumonia in Leighton, Ala. She was 69.
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