Frankie's Secret

Frankie's Secret is about the murder of Charlie Silvers by his wife Frankie on December 22, 1831 in Mitchell county, NC. As the true story goes, Charlie was married to Frankie & they had a baby girl. One evening Charlie came home drunk & scared the baby making her scream & cry. Charlie threatened harm against the baby if Frankie couldn't quiet her so Frankie grabbed the axe from beside the fireplace & hit Charlie on the head knocking him unconcious. Terrified, she knew that if he woke up he'd surely kill her for what she'd done to him so she decided to finish him off. She struck him again until he was dead & dismembered his body to hide the evidence. She tried to burn parts of him in the fireplace, tried to hide some of him under the floorboards of the house & in various places on their property. Eventually a search for Charlie turned up pieces of his body & Frankie's crime was eventually proven. Charlie is buried in Kona, NC in three seperate graves side by side because each time parts of his body were found they were buried. Frankie Silvers was hanged in Morganton, North Carolina on July 12, 1833. She was about 17 years old. Charlie was 19. This painting is of a cabin interior & has a sense of urgency, of someone rushing away, the door flung open & is left ajar. There is a hand carved wooden baby spoon, a black ribbon symbolic of mourning & an axe head. The wood is chopped & stained red symbolizing the gruesome story of Frankie's Secret. The box is handmade & the painting is oil on birch panel. Frankie's Secret