The story of Frankie and Charlie Silver began in 1831, yet it captivates an audience to this day. Descendants from both families have strong ideas on what they believed happened that night. Most people, however, are content with the fact that we'll never know exactly what went down in that little wood cabin, and that's a big part of what keeps us interested. That, among a few other things.

To start, Frankie was regarded as pretty, so that already raises the level of public interest. There's just something about a pretty woman doing something ugly that piques our curiosity. In fact, both her and her husband Charlie appeared to be well liked within their small North Carolina mountain community. Accounts of the two from Alfred Silver, Charlie's half-brother, painted Charlie as "a favorite at all the parties for he could make merry by talking, laughing, and playing musical instruments," and of Frankie: "She had charms, I never saw a smarter little woman."

That, however, is where the compliments stop and the accusations begin. Charlie's camp colors Frankie as a jealous wife who killed him in his sleep out of revenge. Accounts in Frankie's favor, however, describe Charlie as a bit of a drunkard and highly abusive, with Frankie killing him in self defense.

Wayne Silver, a historian of the Silver family, offers a more nuanced view on what he presumes happened that December night. After going out for Christmas liquor, Charlie returns home and an argument breaks out between him and Frankie. Likely inebriated, Charlie makes a treat towards his wife and crying child and begins to load his gun. While he probably didn't mean it -- he's just drunk and acting foolish -- things are heated and Frankie reacts in understandable panic. Its a small cabin, an ax is right by the fireplace, she grabs it and swings. "It was more of an accident than anything else," Silver believes.

The events following the murder also add to the lure of this tale. Pieces of Charlie were found in the fireplace and around the property, and they continued to find parts of him for some time. Indeed, Charlie Silver has three different grave markers, with different body parts discovered at different times beneath each one.

It's difficult to imagine a modern woman dismembering her husband after killing him in self defense. In fact dismemberment is often used to help dispel claims of defense. Don Haines of Blue Ridge Country offers some insight:

"It was a sexist society. It was not unusual for a man to murder his wife and receive no punishment. Nineteen-year-old Charlie was perhaps an unfortunate product of an unfortunate environment – a young man who may have manifested the worst of his time’s mountain mores. This ingrained attitude may have had a significant role in the events of December 22, 1831."

He points out that we're talking about an eighteen year old in an extremely male dominated society here, her mind is likely filled with panic and fear. There's no room to consider the idea of justifiable homicide. Wayne Silver theorizes that young Frankie would have naturally turned to her family for help, and though the plan was doomed from the start, they decided the best course of action was to attempt to hide the body and pretend he never came home that night.

Despite the guilty verdict and subsequent hanging of Frankie, she garnered a lot of support in the time between her trial and execution. She had not been allowed to speak at trial, but she reportedly spoke after the fact, and changed minds among the general public. Even seven of her jurors wrote to the governor requesting she be pardoned.

While these attempts were ultimately futile, they give us a glimpse at how easily a mind can be changed -- Frankie's jurors were originally 9/3 for acquittal before rehearing some revised testimony. We see how important it is that the accused be given the opportunity to speak in their defense, an opportunity that Frankie did not have.

It is also important not to let 21st century lenses cloud our view of this tragedy. Both Frankie and Charlie were products of their environment, and it would be difficult for any of us to imagine living in that society. Provided the claims that Charlie was abusive are true, we cannot hold him to our modern standard of accountability. He was a young man taught a very different set of rights and wrongs than we should expect from those in today's world. Likewise, we cannot rush to judge Frankie for her ill advised coverup. She was very likely a young woman trying to do what she saw as right for her child and her family.

For me, Frankie Silver is one of the easier killers to feel sympathy for. I imagine the fear she felt must have been tremendous, both when her husband became a threat to her and her daughter's life -- whether real or imagined -- and upon realizing what she had done to him. But those feelings of fear and of helplessness are ultimately what led her to make the unfortunate choices she made. When you put that idea on a broader scale, it becomes an important thing to reflect upon in modern society. When we see people make bad decisions, it is necessary to pause before jumping to dismissing them as bad or reckless people. For the more abandoned one feels, the more likely one is to behave in a rash fashion -- the less you have to loose, the less you care about consequences.

That can be particularly poignant this time of year when dealing with friends and family suffering from depression. Its something I constantly have to remind myself of -- knowing that I'm limited on how much I can invest in the emotions of others, lest I drive myself into another mental breakdown, I can sometimes neglect to let others know I care. What's important to remember is that you don't have to fully invest yourself emotionally into a situation to let someone know that you have and will not abandon them should they ever need your help. Sometimes it can help just to know that you do in fact have something to loose.