Francine Hughes

Who is Francine Hughes?

Francine Hughes was an American battered wife who, after thirteen years of domestic abuse, set her husband aflame while he slept on March 9, 1977. James Hughes was killed and the house destroyed in the resulting inferno.

Hughes told her children to put on their coats and wait in the car. She then started a fire with gasoline poured around her sleeping husband's bed. The house burst into flames as she drove, with her children in the car, to the police station so she could confess to the killing.

After trial in Lansing, Hughes was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. It is widely believed that the Judge and the Jury largely sympathized with Hughes and her plight and felt that the murder of her husband was justified and as a result found her not guilty.

Hughes' story was made into a book and a subsequent film in 1984 titled The Burning Bed starring Farrah Fawcett. Folk singer Lyn Hardy also created a song about these events entitled "The Ballad of Francine Hughes".