Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  Asked where the girls were at that time, she answered Oprah in a peculiar way: “I want to say they were watching TV.”

  But it was early in the morning, and the little girls were either in bed or sitting out in the hall, as Patricia had testified, frightened about what was happening in their parents’ bedroom.

  Mary said, “I still ask myself, What in the world happened?” She had a vague memory of Matthew “laying there,” but he didn’t say anything. She had wiped his mouth because there was blood coming from it, and it just kept “coming and coming.”

  But she couldn’t see anything wrong with him and couldn’t understand why he was bleeding. And now, it was akin to a shade coming down over Mary’s eyes, although they were still open. Almost to herself, she spoke of how people’s appearances can change in a matter of seconds. She meant as they died, but she could not say that either. “It’s just terrible,” Mary said, describing how dead faces change.

  “I just took off,” she said. “We ran away. We didn’t go to his parents because they were on vacation. I was going to Memphis.” But then she had become aware that she was headed toward Mississippi instead.

  In the same breath that she described her fear of her husband, Mary said with as much feeling as she had mustered so far, “I do love him. I do love Matthew.” She told Oprah she could not imagine life without him.

  Just before “something very bad happened,” Mary said she felt her life was in danger. But now she was better. She said she was only beginning to find out who she really was, describing how frightened she once was because she had broken the sun visor on her car and had been afraid to tell Matthew. Now, she told Oprah, she saw that it had been her car, and that she shouldn’t have been afraid over a broken visor.

  When Oprah asked about the financial crisis that came about after she bounced some checks in the computer scam aftermath, Mary said she wasn’t upset about that. She had had nothing to do with that—it had all been Matthew’s idea. Yes, she paid the bills and balanced the checkbook—but it was Matthew who participated in the “Nigerian bank scam.” No, she told Oprah, he wasn’t angry with her because it was his doing.

  She knew virtually nothing about the bank problem. That jarred with almost everything in the courtroom testimony about Mary’s frantic efforts to hide the check kiting.

  And still she seemed unable to explain what she was afraid of on the morning Matthew died.

  Possibly the most painful parts of Oprah’s interview with Mary Winkler were the questions about the couple’s sex life. During her testimony, Mary had been terribly embarrassed about Matthew’s insistence on anal sex but hadn’t been disturbed by references to oral sex. Now, she included both in her litany of sexual abuse at Matthew’s hands. She waffled about whether he had struck her physically.

  A doubter might say that Mary’s excruciatingly long pauses after Oprah asked her a question came about because she was trying to remember what she had said earlier.

  As Mary-on-film spoke, her attorneys, Leslie Ballin and Steve Farese, were live in Oprah’s audience. Farese’s sister was handling Mary’s legal struggle to win back the custody of her three daughters.

  Will that happen? Should it happen? This is a question almost as difficult to answer as one about Mary Winkler’s possible motivation for shooting her husband.

  When Oprah asked her why she should have her girls back, Mary’s answer was simple, and she gave no concrete reasons.

  “I’m their mother.”

  They have not seen her for a year. She lives in McMinnville, Tennessee, in a house provided by a supporter. Can Mary answer the questions that her three little girls will surely ask her? Can she look them in the eye, tell them as much of the truth as they can handle, and make them feel safe? Can she feel safe enough herself to deal with reality and not try to relegate it to the cloudy past where facts keep changing?

  Certainly, both Mary and her daughters should continue to receive mental health counseling and therapy. The very bad thing that happened will be a dark ghost hovering over all of them until they can learn to deal with it.

  Even Oprah Winfrey, who can get almost anyone to talk about almost anything, had an extremely difficult time trying to get Mary Winkler to tell her what had happened to her and why her children should be returned to her.

  I’m sure Oprah was still shaking her head in puzzlement when the studio lights went down, and that her hours spent with Mary Winkler will remain a sharp memory for a very long time.

  It soon became clear that the saga of Mary Winkler would spark continual headlines. In Huntingdon, Tennessee, on September 19, Carroll County chancellor Ron Harmon listened to eight hours of often-conflicting testimony from Mary, her former father-in-law, Dan Winkler, and four psychologists regarding her suitability to visit with her three daughters, now age nine, eight, and two.

  Dr. Lynne Zager repeated her opinion that on the morning Matthew was shot Mary had been suffering from mild depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, which resulted in a “dissociative episode,” or a break with reality. Zager was not concerned that Mary would be “a significant risk of hurting herself or others, including the children.” She felt that Mary’s main stressor had been her marriage to Matthew Winkler, but that was no longer an issue, and Mary had received treatment, had a good support system in friends and family, and now knew how to recognize what events could trigger dissociative episodes. In short, she felt that Mary was no longer dangerous.

  Dr. Robert Kennon, however, representing the elder Winklers, testified that he had interviewed Mary’s daughters only five days before this hearing. Patricia, nine, had expressed fear of her mother. “She killed my father,” Patricia allegedly said. “I don’t know if she will kill me…”

  Dr. Kennon offered his opinion, saying that he was concerned with the longevity of Mary’s dissociative disorder, extending, possibly, from the time her sister died many years before to the period of Matthew’s murder and to her flight afterward. In his experience, only 30 percent of patients with dissociative episodes actually got better with treatment and medication. The rest of these patients demonstrated mild to severe symptoms, Kennon said, and some grew markedly worse.

  Reverend Dan Winkler acknowledged that although he still loved Mary, warnings from psychologists made him afraid for his grandchildren. He said he had noted drastic changes in the children’s behavior after they visited with their mother.

  That, of course, had been approximately a year earlier. Mary had neither seen nor talked to them for many months.

  Another psychologist, Dr. John Ciocca, spoke for Mary’s side and said that it was quite possible that separating the girls from their mother could be hurting them.

  The sun had set by the time Chancellor Harmon handed down his decision. He granted Mary Winkler supervised visitation with her daughters but said it must be for “a limited time under limited conditions.” He also said she could speak to them by phone every other day.

  It seemed a huge coup for Mary. She was elated and, showing far more emotion than onlookers had come to expect from her, hugged her family and friends when she heard the news.

  Next, the Winklers’ attorney, Bill Neese, and Kay Farese Turner (Steve Farese’s sister, who represented Mary), would meet to work out a schedule for times, dates, and places of visitation.

  It was only the first battle. Dan and Dianne Winkler’s suit to terminate Mary Winkler’s parental rights was still pending, as was their petition to adopt her children.

  A first visit was to take place on Saturday, September 28, but it didn’t happen. Mary was devastated when a final-hour motion to block visitation was filed by Matthew’s parents’ attorneys. The court of appeals granted the motion.

  Mary’s legal team would have ten days to respond.

  On that same last weekend in September 2007, the national tabloids reported that Mary Winkler had had a close relationship with a man for months. Darrell Pillow, forty-one, a truck driver for a grocery company and the brother of Paul
Pillow, who owns the dry cleaning shop where Mary works, verified that they were very close friends.

  Still, despite the tabloid reporters’ efforts to slant the friendship toward an affair, it seemed more a casual thing than a blazing romance. Mary didn’t comment on Darrell Pillow at all, and he spoke mostly of casual meetings: visiting her in the mental health facility where she spent the summer of 2007, or of eating lunch or dinner together. He seemed far more taken with Mary than she with him.

  Before her surprisingly short sentence was handed down in April, Pillow said that Mary had been reluctant to make plans for the future. During her trial, she told him that she might not have any future but “years and years” behind bars.

  Pillow, a short man with bright blue eyes and dark hair, spoke with Tonya Smith-King of the Jackson Sun. He said that when Mary was released from the treatment center, she had told him she “needed to be single,” and he felt her pulling away from him.

  “I was hurt,” Pillow said. “The times that me and Mary spent together, I thought there was more there. I asked her, ‘Mary, am I going to be history when you get out of here? Am I going to be done? Are we going to be over?’

  “And she said, ‘No. Absolutely not!’ I just kind of had the feeling that as time was getting close for her to be a free woman, I was kind of getting a little feeling that she was fixing to go her separate ways when she gets out of here, and I don’t know if that’s still gonna happen.”

  Pillow said they had spoken of marriage, and that he liked Mary because she reminded him of his mother, who had died when he was fourteen. “We looked good together. She was my height. We just seemed to make a good couple—I thought we did, anyway. I don’t really know what she was thinking…”

  Her boss’s brother carried pictures that he said Mary had given him of her and her girls and one that included Matthew. Still, it seemed obvious that her main concerns were all about her daughters and that more than anything else she wanted them back in her custody. Her attorneys had told her it was best if she remained single without any complicating factors like a boyfriend or lover.

  Darrell Pillow evinced no concern at all about his own safety should he and Mary eventually hook up. He found her a sweet and considerate woman, and he clearly cared a great deal for her. He refused to say if they had been intimate.

  Whether they will ever be together is an unanswerable question. Mary faces one legal hurdle after another as she fights to be reunited with her children.

  And marriage, as she has known it, hasn’t left Mary Winkler with positive feelings about the institution. Only time will tell.

  Photographic Insert

  THE ANTIQUES DEALER’S WIFE

  Raoul Guy Rockwell poses with one of his fabulous collection of Ashanti weights. He was the darling of Seattle society women in 1960, and they flocked to his antiques shop on Lake Union.

  Manzanita “Manzy” Rockwell, 39, and her husband, Raoul, clowning around. Manzy had left her first husband to run off with Raoul, but the romance went out of their marriage all too soon. And then she and her 18-year old daughter vanished.

  Dolores Mearns, 18, was excited about her college classes, but along with her mother, she disappeared without any warning in the spring of 1960. Friends worried about Dolores and Manzanita.

  Evelyn Emerson was swept off her feet by Raoul Guy Rockwell, but their honeymoon ended when he, too, disappeared. There was so much the wealthy divorcee didn’t know about her bridegroom.

  The Rockwells had their popular antiques shop in this “shabby chic” building, and they lived there, too. Once, it was filled with treasures and with women enthralled with Raoul, but it became a house of horrors.

  Seattle Homicide detective Gail Leonard sifts through the ashes of Raoul Guy Rockwell’s fireplace. The handsome antiques dealer told friends and neighbors that he was heartsick when his beloved wife and stepdaughter deserted him. Leonard and Detective Herb Swindler tried to locate the women.

  Seattle Homicide detective Herb Swindler tracked the travels of Raoul Guy Rockwell for months, faced him in New York City, and elicited macabre answers. But was it a confession to the unthinkable?

  THE TRUCK DRIVER’S WIFE

  Dorothy Jones burned to death in this house—but how? And why?

  Arson investigators spread the burned mattress sections on the lawn of Dorothy Jones’s home. They tried to determine how an “impossible” fire had started, but nothing fell into place. Had Dorothy herself simply burst into flames?

  Bill Hoppe, an arson investigator for the Seattle Fire Department’s renowned Marshal 5 unit, had seen one case of spontaneous combustion; he wondered if Dorothy Jones’s death was another.

  Jim Reed, a member of the Marshal 5 arson investigation team, evaluates burn patterns in Dorothy Jones’s home as he looks for the flames’ point of origin. With Bill Hoppe, the arson detective tried to unveil some fatal secret in her life.

  THE CONVICT’S WIFE

  Doris Mae Light had a difficult life, but it got worse when her husband’s brother came to spend Christmas—a surprise guest.

  Larry Light had reason to resent his brother, George, and they both had good reasons to get out of the state of Illinois. Larry followed George and Doris Mae to Oregon, where they all lived together in an old farmhouse in the country outside Salem.

  Lieutenant Jim Byrnes of the Marion County, Oregon, Sheriff’s Office investigated the family triangle that appeared to have ended up as a duo. It was no wonder some people said the isolated farmhouse was haunted.

  Long after he failed to appear at his favorite tavern, Oregon detectives discovered all that remained of George Light.

  THE CHEMIST’S WIFE

  Seattle Police Homicide detectives were called out from their homes on a rainy Christmas Day to investigate a tragedy. They found an elderly couple there, but the young couple who came to celebrate the holiday was gone.

  Veteran Homicide detective Dick Reed and a uniformed officer take measurements at the home of Florence and Bill Borden. Reed and his sergeant, Ivan Beeson, would find themselves on an unexpected ferry ride as they tracked an elusive suspect.

  Like any number of men who seek to possess the women in their lives, Terry Ruckelhaus would not allow his teenage girlfriend to leave him. What had begun as a wonderful romance in an island paradise ended in a savage attack on a vulnerable victim.

  “Papa” Borden, 83, fought to save his granddaughter, but his opponent was fifty-five years younger than he was. He will always be remembered as a hero to his family and to the police who spent a stormy Christmas Day looking for his killer and, perhaps, yet another victim. The holiday season brings out the best—and sometimes the worst—in people.

  THE MINISTER’S WIFE

  In 2006, the Reverend Matthew Winkler and his wife, Mary Carol, lived in this house in Selmer, Tennessee, with their three small daughters. It was the parsonage furnished by the Fourth Street Church of Christ, where Matthew was the youth minister. The Winklers appeared to have a happy marriage.

  (Credit: Beverly Morrison)

  When neither Matthew nor Mary Winkler showed up for evening services at this church, the Fourth Street Church of Christ, on Wednesday, March 22, 2006, church members became concerned. Several men, friends of the Winklers, went to their home. What they found stunned them.

  (Credit: Beverly Morrison)

  The Reverend Matthew Winkler was handsome, charismatic, and well versed in the Bible. He had moved up steadily in the Church of Christ as a youth minister, and looked forward to being the pulpit minister in his own church soon.

  (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

  Mary Winkler, always the perfect minister’s wife, was very small, soft-spoken, and seemed to be in shock when police located her in Orange Beach, Alabama, where she had taken her three daughters for one last “happy time.”

  (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

  Patricia and Allie Winkler leaving their father’s funeral with flowers for remembrance.

 
(Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

  Mary Winkler, holding hands with her defense attorneys, is arraigned and charged with the murder of her husband in March 2006. She looked like a terrified child in her orange jail uniform. Church members and townspeople alike wondered what could have happened in the Winkler household a few days before.

  (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

  Steve Farese Sr.

  (left) and Leslie Ballin, one of American’s “dream teams” of criminal defense, stepped forward to represent Mary Winkler. She clung to them and depended on them as her trial for her husband’s murder lay ahead. (Credit: Beverly Morrison)

  In August 2006 Mary Winkler was released on bail. Her father hugs her as Attorney Steve Farese looks on. Mary lived with friends in McMinnville, Tennessee, and worked at a dry cleaning business while she waited for trial. Like most trials, there were delays.

  (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

  Mary at work at her job in the dry cleaning business in the fall of 2006. Her three daughters were living with their paternal grandparents. On New Year’s Eve, someone with a camera phone took her picture as she sat at a bar, and every area media outlet carried it on the evening news. Some viewers were scandalized.