Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  As the investigation continued, no one knew about those secret, shameful things. And the detectives wondered what might possibly have been the catalyst that triggered such bloodshed in this seemingly impossible puzzle, this incomprehensible set of circumstances.

  Was it possible that Matthew Winkler had been all façade and charisma, a man who gloried in standing in the pulpit preaching or being the center of a group of young people who viewed him with adulation, while at home he ruled with an iron fist and demanded too much of a wife who was run ragged with his edicts? Was his Christian love all for his congregation and his fans? Or was he the sincere and caring Christian that most of Selmer saw?

  Was Mary Winkler a bitter woman who schemed to shoot her husband in a cold, premeditated act of violence—so that she could be free of him? In the Church of Christ, divorce wasn’t really a choice. Had Mary Winkler decided to “divorce” Matthew with a single shot from a shotgun?

  Or was Mary a victim herself, caught in a loveless marriage where she finally turned off her emotions, after holding them inside for years? She had lost her little sister, her mother, her third baby, and apparently her hopes for the future.

  Up until March 22, 2006, Mary had managed to deal with her disappointments and anxieties by burying them so deeply that she didn’t have to face them. Surely, something had to have happened to change her coping mechanism, and she had awakened that morning to a crisis she could not avoid.

  It had.

  Mary Winkler had fallen victim to a con game. Con games are as old as mankind, but the one that tricked her bloomed with the millennium and the Internet: “Nigerian fraud.”

  Anyone with a computer and an e-mail address linked to the Internet receives dozens, scores, hundreds, even thousands of spam messages from con artists who promise huge rewards to those who are naïve enough—or greedy enough—to take the bait.

  It’s not unusual for e-mail boxes to be clogged with more than three hundred offers of access to fortunes every day, most originally from Nigeria; but they come from all over the world.

  The spammers usually claim to be bank officers representing wealthy deceased clients with no heirs. Sometimes they say they are the widows or the orphaned children of high-ranking officials in foreign countries (who always tend to be “dying” of “esophageal cancer”). Working from boiler rooms with banks of computers and Internet coffee shops, the crooks send e-mails to every screen name they can get their hands on.

  Some of their offers are quite sophisticated, while others are transparently phony—full of misspellings and grammatical errors.

  It would seem that no one would actually believe there are perfect strangers anxious to share huge fortunes by transferring millions of dollars into United States bank accounts. But people do believe these lies, even though common sense should tell them that no American could deposit so much money in a bank account without the Internal Revenue Service being notified.

  More pragmatically, there is no “free lunch,” but there is, as P. T. Barnum once said, “a sucker born every minute.”

  And Mary Winkler was one of them. She wasn’t stupid; she had completed several years of college, and she was still taking classes at Freed-Hardeman.

  But she was desperate.

  Matthew often criticized her bookkeeping abilities, even though he assigned her to pay their bills and balance their bank accounts. In the fall of 2005, Mary had fallen behind, and she was ripe for a phony come-on that offered her more money than she had ever imagined. The offer that arrived in the Winklers’ e-mail didn’t come from Nigeria; it came from Canada.

  All Mary had to do was to serve as a middleman to collect payment for oil deals. She quickly sent her name, address, bank account numbers, and then checks for several thousand dollars in transfer fees.

  Beginning in October 2005, Mary Winkler received checks totaling over $17,000, and she deposited them at once. Of course, the Canadian checks bounced. However, her own checks for “transfer expenses,” which would eventually overdraw the Winklers’ bank account by more than $5,000, had already been mailed.

  If Mary thought she was in trouble over finances before, she was probably worried sick on Tuesday evening, March 21, 2006. Up to that point she had managed to cover her losses by running from bank to bank, but now it was all tumbling down on her.

  It’s likely that Mary and Matthew had an argument over their finances that night. Whether she told him that their bank had issued an ultimatum saying they must both come in for a meeting the next day, no one really knows. It’s doubtful that Mary confessed the enormity of the problem that arose when the foreign checks bounced.

  She would have had no resources to make up the $5,000 overdraft. Check kiting was a felony, and Mary might even face arrest, a trial, and jail time.

  Such a scandal would, of course, damage Matthew’s reputation, too, and a minister’s reputation is paramount to his success.

  But on March 22, 2006, Mary Winkler was expected in her banker’s office, along with her husband, to explain why she was overdrawn. This would account for her behavior at the Selmer Elementary School on March 21, when she was on her cell phone so often, appearing distraught and close to tears.

  Mary Winkler was backed into a corner. Writing a fraudulent check was certainly not what was to be expected of a Southern preacher’s wife. Already, according to Mary, Matthew had come to disapprove of almost everything she did. He didn’t like the way she talked, or the way she walked, or ate, or fell asleep when they were watching movies on television. He told her she was too fat, she said, and insisted that she diet, sometimes even telling her she should skip a meal while he took extra portions.

  What on earth would he do when he found out that she was overdrawn at the bank?

  Five thousand dollars overdrawn.

  When Mary was arrested in Orange Beach, Alabama, she didn’t tell anyone about her financial crisis; that paled beside her current situation. She was in far more trouble than she had been a day and a half earlier. Matthew would never worry about his public image again, and Mary was headed for jail back in McNairy County.

  A lot of wives struggling to keep up with what their husbands and community expect of them might empathize with Mary’s predicament over money. Very, very few of them would shoot their husbands in the back.

  There had to be more to the story. Mary had insisted to Stan Stabler and Steve Stuesher that she loved her husband. Indeed, she had gone even further and insisted that she didn’t want his image smeared by the newspapers and television. She seemed more anxious to protect him than to save herself.

  Still, in order for Mary Winkler to avoid spending life in prison, cut off from her three precious daughters, she would almost certainly have to have had more reason to shoot Matthew than the revelation that she had written NSF checks.

  Mary had told authorities that she had only wanted a few precious days with her children, and that she’d planned to return to Tennessee and give Patricia, Allie, and Brianna to her in-laws. If she hadn’t been arrested in Orange Beach, she may well have done that. She didn’t have enough money to start a new life somewhere far away, and she certainly didn’t have any in the bank. When she fled to Alabama, she had had her wits about her enough to take cash with her. Although she packed only baby socks, she had a few hundred dollars with her. She still had $123 left when she was arrested. She could have taken more, but she’d left behind Matthew’s money clip on the bedroom dresser, and it was full of bills.

  On Saturday morning, March 25, Baldwin County, Alabama, authorities released Mary Winkler to the custody of McNairy County sheriff Ricky Roten when he and officers from the West Tennessee Drug Task Force (Selmer Division) traveled to Alabama to transport her back to Selmer. She signed a form waiving extradition, agreeing to go to Tennessee. The fact that the drug task force officers went with Roten wasn’t significant; they often doubled as backup for the sheriff’s office in non-drug cases. Feelings were running high in the Winkler murder case, and it was a safety precautio
n.

  Mary gave a statement to TBI agent Chris Carpenter. She was now more forthcoming about what had happened in the little house on Mollie Drive on the morning of March 22. She admitted shooting Matthew, but insisted that she hadn’t done it deliberately. She’d had the gun in her hands, not intending to shoot, but she’d slipped on some decorative pillows that had fallen on the floor.

  Mary had lengthy fuzzy gaps in her memory, however, about the details of what had happened.

  She told Carpenter she remembered wiping blood from her husband’s mouth and that he had looked at her and gasped, “Why?”

  Lodged in the McNairy County Justice Complex, Mary had no money for bail or for attorneys. Although her family and many friends rallied around her, offering to put up their homes as security for bail, she remained in jail. To say that the citizens of west Tennessee were scandalized would be an understatement. For the moment, she was probably better off behind bars than out in the community.

  But Mary was to get a break in terms of attorneys: she would have her own “dream team.” Prominent criminal defense attorneys Steven Farese Sr. and Leslie Ballin stepped forward to represent her pro bono. They would not charge her for the hours and hours of investigation and courtroom time they would spend trying to save her from the death penalty—at worst—or from fifty-one years in prison. Their pro bono offer probably wasn’t entirely altruistic. If the defense should prevail at trial, both Farese and Ballin would be even more sought after by potential clients than they already were. Farese’s peers had recently named him one of the top ten defense attorneys in America. The Mary Winkler case would focus media spotlights all over America on her attorneys.

  When Mary was arraigned at the Justice Complex on March 27, 2005, she walked into the courtroom clad in orange jail scrubs, holding hands with her attorneys. Her hair was freshly cut in a bob reminiscent of children of the 1930s, and she herself looked childlike, given her tiny size and the fact that she stared at the floor rather than meeting anyone’s eyes. She actually had to reach up to grasp Farese’s and Ballin’s hands. She looked to be no more than twelve or fourteen. She clung to her attorneys as if they were a lifeline. And indeed they were.

  Mary spoke only once, saying, “No sir,” to Judge Bob Gray when he asked her if she had any questions. He entered a not-guilty plea for her.

  Farese wouldn’t tell reporters what his defense tactics might be. He said he hadn’t seen Mary’s “alleged confession,” and that his defense so far was “every defense known to man.” He would take a wait-and-see attitude before he decided what his approach was.

  Later that day, more than three hundred mourners filed through the Shackleford Funeral Home for a viewing to pay their last respects to the body of Matthew Winkler. And at 5 A.M. the next morning, Mary herself was escorted quietly to the funeral home for a final private moment with her husband. She stayed for more than an hour.

  On that Tuesday, March 28, funeral services were held for Matthew at the Fourth Street Church of Christ. The media was not invited to Matthew Winkler’s funeral, but it seemed that at least a third of the people in Selmer and McNairy County attended. The sanctuary was filled to its five-hundred-person capacity, and the overflow crowd, relegated to the church basement, watched the services on closed-circuit television.

  Later, Matthew was buried in the Carroll County Memorial Gardens in Huntingdon, Tennessee. His two older daughters were allowed to pick flowers from the many arrangements sent to the Fourth Street Church of Christ, mementos they could press in a Bible to remind them of their father.

  In less than a week, their entire world had changed: their father was dead, their mother was in jail, and they were now living with their paternal grandparents.

  The investigation into Matthew Winkler’s violent death continued, and so did the gossip. Mary received jail visits from her family, a number of loyal friends, and even some members of the Fourth Street Church congregation. Locals appeared to view her either as a Jezebel or as a pathetic woman who’d been driven to kill.

  TBI agents obtained a search warrant that permitted them to remove the Winklers’ computers—both from their home and from Matthew’s church office. Neighbors peeking out of their windows watched the investigators carry the towers and monitors away, but they had no idea what the agents might be looking for.

  TBI agent Chris Carpenter worked along with Selmer Police criminal investigator Roger Rickman and the Drug Task Force agents in an attempt to discern what had really happened inside the Winkler marriage. They knew who the victim was and who the shooter was. They just didn’t know why it had happened.

  Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin arranged to have Dr. Lynne Zager, a psychologist from Jackson, Tennessee, spend many hours with Mary. Indeed, Zager and Mary would log forty-one sessions together. Farese hinted to the media that he feared Mary’s detachment might suggest that she was suicidal, perhaps still suffering from postpartum depression after Brianna’s birth. He also speculated that the shooting might well have been accidental.

  On March 30, Mary appeared in court again. Again she spoke only once, saying, “Yes sir.” She waived her right to a preliminary hearing. Her attorneys explained that she didn’t want her children to hear “gruesome things” about their father’s death. She did not ask for bail, and would now wait in jail for the next meeting of the McNairy County Grand Jury—which wouldn’t convene until June.

  Although Steve Farese told reporters that every big name in television had called—from Oprah to Dr. Phil to Diane Sawyer, and even beyond—the defense team didn’t want Mary to do interviews. She was seeing her psychologist regularly while she was in jail. Even visits from her children were delayed; she didn’t want to say or do anything that might make their lives more difficult.

  Mary Winkler’s first trial date was set for October 2006. In August, after 144 days in jail, she was released while she waited for trial. Her father posted her $750,000 bond, and she had a job waiting for her. She would live and work in McMinnville, the little town near Nashville where she and Matthew had once lived. Cleaner’s Express, a dry-cleaning business, held a job open for her, and a couple who were close friends had invited her into their home.

  Court watchers thought they saw a defense plan emerging: the Battered Woman’s syndrome. Although Mary refused all offers to appear on television, her father gave an interview on Good Morning America.

  “I saw bad bruises,” he told Diane Sawyer. “The heaviest of makeup covering facial bruises. So one day, I confronted her. I said, ‘Mary Carol, you are coming off as a very abused wife, very battered.’ She would hang her head and say, ‘No, Daddy—everything’s all right. Everything’s all right.’ ”

  If Mary Winkler had been an abused wife, would a jury find that a justifiable reason to shoot her husband in the back?

  That question would not be answered in October. Her trial, which had been set to begin the day before Halloween, was delayed because of scheduling conflicts. Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin had filed far too many motions to be addressed before the autumn trial, and Mary’s next hearing was set for February 22, 2007.

  Mary remained free on bail, and her three daughters continued to live with their grandparents—Reverend Dan Winkler and Dianne Winkler. Mary saw her daughters for a brief visit on October 16 but spent the holidays without them.

  Mary seemed to be living a circumspect life, working at the dry cleaner’s and staying in the home of the couple who stood so firmly behind her. She had been happy once in McMinnville, and she was cosseted there now by many friends.

  But Mary Winkler had almost a talent for saying and doing the wrong thing. Her comment to Stan Stabler on the night she was arrested in Alabama had never really vanished from news coverage: “My ugly came out.”

  It may have been Southern slang, but it had a brutal ring to it, and she could not separate herself from it.

  Her public image got worse on New Year’s Eve. She had every reason to want to leave 2006 behind, although her choice to celebrate t
he end of the year wasn’t a good idea at all. Mary went out that night—to the same bar she had visited three or four times since her release from jail. It could have been worse. It wasn’t only a bar; it was the New York Grill Restaurant. But it happened to have a cocktail lounge. Mary had gone there on her birthday on December 10, too, and no one had paid much attention to her.

  But on New Year’s Eve, things took a negative turn. Mary, not looking at all like a little girl, sat at the bar with a beer in front of her and a cigarette in her hand. Her haircut was short and sleek, and she held her head up proudly, scarcely resembling the meek Mary of the courtroom who almost always kept her eyes downcast.

  Another patron was at the bar with his wife, who nudged him when she recognized Mary. He had his cell phone with him, and it had a camera in it. Apparently without Mary’s knowledge, he took several pictures of her as she sat at the bar, smoking.

  A short time later, he went over to her and asked her if she was the “preacher killer,” or the “husband killer.”

  He was laughing when he asked what to almost anyone with tact would seem to be a rude and thoughtless question. He claimed later that Mary laughed when she said, “Yeah,” and then reportedly added, “You want to be next?”

  Others at the bar joined in the hilarity. Apparently, Mary wasn’t upset by the incident, and she and her friends remained at the bar until after 2 A.M.

  Armed with his blurry phone photographs, the bar patron went to WMC-TV-5 and sold the images of another side of Mary Winkler. When they appeared on the nightly news, there was a huge negative backlash in Tennessee. And the photos of Mary soon hit the Internet as one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.com.

  The manager of the dry cleaner’s where Mary worked gave an indignant interview to WKRN-TV in Nashville. “It was New Year’s Eve. We went to the New York Grill. What were we supposed to do—sit home and cry? She’s not a preacher’s wife. She used to be a preacher’s wife, but he’s dead now. She’s not married. She’s nobody’s wife.”