The call came in on a warm Sunday evening in August. Francis Thompson, alone on her farm twenty miles northwest of Verdigre, Nebraska, told the 911 operator she had just shot a man in self-defense. “He lunged at me and said he was going to kill me,” she said. “I shot him.
”
That man was Dean Frank, her friend of six years, now bleeding out on her kitchen floor. The nearest squad car was almost an hour away. As the clock ticked, investigators would soon realize that the story Francis told was not the whole truth. Francis Thompson moved to the farm in 1985 after her husband died in a construction accident.
It was a fresh start for her and her teenage son, a chance to leave the past behind. The farmhouse sat in a remote part of Knox County, surrounded by nothing but fields, a place where neighbors were few and help was far away. She wasn’t a farmer. She was a woman with a bent toward activism, a passion for animal rights, and a dream of one day turning the property into an organic farm.
She was also a woman who, in her own words, could rescue every animal destined for slaughter if she could. Dean Frank was a few years older than her, a former farmer who had been hit hard by the farm crisis of the ’80s. Francis’s mother paid him to come by and do odd jobs around the place. On evenings when he worked late, he stayed overnight in the spare bedroom upstairs.
Over time, the arrangement grew into a close friendship. For six years, Francis later said, he was a perfect gentleman. Theirs was a non-sexual friendship built on trust and routine. But somewhere along the way, Dean wanted more.
In the summer of 1991, after Francis returned from three years of studying environmental law at the university in Lincoln, their friendship took a romantic turn. Her son was grown now, away at the Naval Academy. She had put down roots. She thought it might be time to open her heart again.
Dean was eager. He proposed several times over that summer. The first offer wasn’t romantic at all—he framed it as a business opportunity, a way for them to work the farm together and try organic farming, which was just coming into vogue. Francis turned him down.
She wrote to her son, expressing her fears that Dean was only after her farm. She signed off with a line that would later haunt her case: “Remember, I may whine and cry, but I is a tough old lady and a damn good shot, too. ”
Dean wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept pushing.
Francis, hesitant because she hadn’t been with a man since her husband’s death, wanted to take things slowly. In early July, they went together to a physician to get tested for STIs and AIDS. The tests came back negative. On July 12th, Francis visited Dean at his trailer to deliver the results.
She stayed for three nights. After returning home, she wrote him a letter: “I put way too much energy into antagonizing about letting sex back into my life. Guess it ain’t for you, but for me, it was the biggest change in lifestyle imaginable. ”
But something shifted quickly after that.
About a week later, Francis called Dean and told him that for their relationship to work, she needed to meet his ex-wife and children. Dean found this strange and got upset. It was a red flag to her. Over the next week, there were several long phone calls between them, some exceeding thirty minutes, as well as letters back and forth.
Francis began to dig. She contacted Dean’s ex-girlfriend and his ex-wife, asking what kind of man he really was. She learned that Dean had once been drunk and threatened an ex with violence, saying he was going to slit her throat. Francis grew suspicious that Dean had ulterior motives, that he wanted her farm more than he wanted her.
She started to pull away. On August 5th, she spoke again with Dean’s ex-girlfriend, who warned her about his past behavior. A few days later, Francis found Dean on her property fixing the irrigation pipe for Arthur, her pet pig. She told him never to come back to her farm.
The calls continued, and Francis said they became increasingly threatening. On August 18th, she contacted the local sheriff about getting a restraining order. He told her she would have to wait until Monday—it was a Sunday, and she could only file on a weekday. Not long after that call, Francis heard a car pull up outside.
She wasn’t expecting anyone. But it was Dean. Francis kept two guns in the house: a . 357 Magnum, a powerful handgun, and a .
25 caliber Beretta. She had purchased ammunition three times from the local hardware store. She had trained to become a private investigator and a security guard. She had practiced with both guns.
At times, she kept them in a safety deposit box at the bank. But in the days leading up to August 18th, she had brought them home. When Dean arrived, the front door was unlocked. He came in carrying a bag of groceries and put them away in the fridge.
Francis told police that she warned him to back off. When he didn’t, she opened fire. She shot him three times. Dean went down, severely wounded.
Francis called 911 and said she acted in self-defense. Then she waited. Nearly fifteen minutes passed. Then twenty.
Then thirty. Dean was still alive, losing blood fast, in excruciating pain. Francis, trained in first aid by the Red Cross, offered him no help. She did place a cushion under his head to make him more comfortable.
But she did not attempt to stop the bleeding. She did not use her training. She waited. At some point during that hour, something was written on the floor in Dean’s blood.
The word “self-defense. ” Investigators later also found a note written in pencil: “I love Fran, self-defense, and I love you. ”
When the officers finally arrived, they found Dean unresponsive but still with a faint pulse. Paramedics attempted CPR, but it was too late.
Dean Frank was pronounced dead at 7:00 p. m. At first, the scene looked like self-defense. Francis had filed for a restraining order.
She had kept a log of threatening calls. She had practiced her shooting. The message in blood on the floor seemed to support her story. But the investigators noticed things that didn’t add up.
There were no signs of forced entry. There was no sign of a struggle. Everything appeared orderly. If Francis had heard Dean’s car approaching, why didn’t she lock the door?
Why did she arm herself instead of taking evasive measures? The message in blood troubled them. Dean’s left hand was clean—no blood on it at all. Yet the writing was slanted right.
And Dean was left-handed. There was more. Francis claimed Dean was crawling around on the floor during the altercation. But the blood evidence showed he had gone down in one spot and never moved.
And then the autopsy revealed the truth. Dean had been shot three times. The medical examiner determined that one shot, to the lower left abdomen, had come from the front. The other two had been fired from behind.
One of those, traveling through the liver and lung before exiting the body, would have been fatal within five to fifteen minutes at most. The forensic evidence painted a timeline that contradicted everything Francis had said. She had not fired three rapid shots in self-defense. She had fired once, incapacitating Dean.
Then, after calling 911, while he lay on the floor dying and unable to move, she had shot him twice more in the back. She had heard the police approaching. She had heard the sirens. Dean wasn’t dying fast enough.
So she finished it. The first shot alone might have looked like self-defense. But the execution-style shots from behind destroyed that story. The message in blood wasn’t written by Dean—it was a cover.
A fabrication to make it look like the dying man had absolved her. Francis Thompson was charged with first-degree murder. The trial was long and drawn out. The community was rocked.
Here was a woman known for loving animals, for her activism, for her academic achievements—a straight-A student pursuing environmental law. And she had murdered a man born and raised in the community. Her defense team painted her as a victim of obsession, arguing that Dean was the one pursuing her, threatening her, and that she had acted in fear for her life. They claimed her jealous words in letters meant only that she loved him as a friend.
They tried to make Dean seem like a man with a history of threatening behavior. But the evidence was damning. The threatening phone calls were only alleged—Francis had no recordings, no proof. The forensic timeline showed the truth.
The first shot didn’t kill Dean. And rather than use her Red Cross training to save him, she shot him twice more. The jury found her guilty. The judge sentenced her to life imprisonment for first-degree murder, with an additional ten years for the firearm charge, to run consecutively.
The community was left with a question that had no clear answer. What did Francis stand to gain? She had thrown everything away—her studies, her reputation, her future. The motive remained murky, but the truth was clear.
Dean Frank lay dying on her floor for nearly an hour. And instead of helping him, instead of letting him live, she made sure he wouldn’t talk.
