Three days before Christmas, 1831, Frances Silver killed her husband, Charles, in their Appalachian Mountain cabin in North Carolina. It was a grisly murder, the body chopped into pieces, some of it burned in the fireplace. Three months later, Frankie was convicted & sentenced to death. She was hanged in Morganton on July 12, 1833. Frankie's story has been told & retold ever since, the facts blending into ballad, legend & myth, suppposedly becoming the basis for the popular song, "Frankie & Johnny." New York Times best-selling author Perry Deane Young, a descendant of some of the figures in the case, was fascinated by this story from childhood. He began collecting material about it as a teenager & was startled to discover as a young man that much of the story he'd always heard was false. He spent years sifting through documents & interviewing descendants of the people involved to tell the real story of the murder & hanging.
