Francine Moran Hughes (later Wilson; August 17, 1947 – March 22, 2017) was an American woman who, after thirteen years of domestic abuse, set fire to the bed in which her live-in ex-husband Mickey Hughes was sleeping, on March 9, 1977, in Dansville, Michigan. Mickey was killed and the house destroyed in the resulting fire. At trial, Hughes was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity in one of the first cases involving "battered-woman syndrome" as a defense. Early life Francine Hughes was born in Stockbridge, Michigan. Her mother named her Francine after a French musician. Her father, a farmworker, was an abusive alcoholic. At age 16, Francine left high school to marry James "Mickey" Hughes. They had four children together: Christie, James “Jimmy” Berlin Jr, Nicole and Dana. In the movie about Hughes' story The Burning Bed there are only the first 3 children. Abuse Although she had moved out after their divorce was finalized in April 1971, Mickey had moved back in with her after he was involved in a serious car accident that summer. Francine later testified in court that although she was reluctant to have him return to the home, she felt she could not refuse as she did not want to "hurt him more...than he already had been", referring to the severity of his injuries from the accident. The abuse persisted and escalated in the years after Mickey's recovery, and he regularly beat her, destroyed furniture and killed his daughter's kitten. Francine felt that she could not remove Mickey from the home or move out herself, fearing that he would make good on his constant threats to kill her. She obtained her GED and, in 1976, enrolled in a secretarial course in an effort to obtain some independence. Crime and trial On the day of the fire, March 9, 1977, Francine returned from her secretarial course in the afternoon and found Mickey intoxicated and irate. He refused to allow her to make food for their four children, and berated her for some time about quitting school, which she refused to agree to, even after Mickey forced her to burn her schoolbooks. He began to physically assault her. The police came and spoke to the pair, but left after refusing to arrest Mickey as he had not assaulted her in front of them. However, a police officer would later testify that Hughes had warned her