Posted on 03/24/2006 8:28:46 AM PST by Blogger
Slain Minister's Wife to Be Charged With Murder Friday, March 24, 2006 MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The wife of a Tennessee pastor found shot dead in his house Wednesday will face first-degree murder charges, authorities announced Friday.
Mary Winklerwas found Thursday night with the couple's three daughters in Orange Beach, Ala., about 400 miles south of their home in Selmer.
Investigators with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said she was interviewed during the night and the charges were being prepared.
"We've interviewed her and she was cooperative," said Jennifer Johnson of the TBI, adding that once a warrant with the charges was drawn up, extradition proceedings would begin to have her returned to Tennessee.
Matthew Winkler was found shot to death in the bedroom of his parsonage Wednesday by church members who began searching for him after he failed to show up at an evening event at Selmer's Church of Christ.
Police said there were no signs of forced entry, but Winkler's wife and children — Breanna, 1; Mary Alice, 6; and Patricia, 8 — were gone.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The defense attorney they just interviewed was coming up with every plausible or nonplausible reason why this woman shot her husband in the back.
But then again, that is the role of a defense atty.
Very insightful comments. There is something that just doesn't hang together here. They are saying it was premeditated but if it was, she did not act like it. She would have had a better plan, one would think. She would have had some story.
The details will surely trickle out. In the meantime, I am going to be praying for everyone concerned. Those poor little kids! You never know what goes on behind closed doors and many families have secrets.
For myself, I have discovered that no family is perfect, but I am just horrified by all the news stories of the past few years outlining truly awful things. I don't remember the volume of horrors when I was younger. Didn't they happen or did they not report them?
If he was a 'by-the-Bible' preacher like the church said, he probably also had firmly-held beliefs about being the head of his house and he probably told his wife that she couldn't do something she wanted to do.
That, of course, is like waving a red cape in front of an angry bull. She knows that in U.S. society today it is the wife who runs the house and the husband whose sole function is to see that she gets what she wants.
Solution? Off the guy and claim abuse. Works like a charm cause everybody knows that guys are always responsible, even if they aren't and women aren't ever responsible even if they are.
Yes, I have a thought. I'm wondering why you think a dead person is the cause of his own death without knowing any facts? Seriously, a man is dead and you immediately suspect HIM as being the bad guy? I guess you're conditioned to think a woman just can't be evil, eh?
But brace yourself for her defense lawyer to smear the victim by claiming he beat his wife and she shot him in the back because "she thought that was her only way out".
Are adults ever included in AMBER alerts? I thought those were only for missing children.
Could be. But don't expect the "Save A.Y." crowd to come out and defend a Christian woman.
A photo can be very revealing, or it can capture the odd moment of weird looks that we all have from time to time. I have seen photos of myself that make me look drunk/drugged, and I wasn't. There are photos of our children in which one child looks to be a zillion miles away. But maybe the child was abused. We have no idea.
I was looking at the church bulletins of the church where they previously worked, and there is a farewell letter from HIM and only him. I find that odd. And they were having a baby shower for the Winklers just before the Winklers moved. McMinnville isn't a metropolic, but it is a bigger town than the one where they moved. And they moved to a much smaller congregation. Very isolating for a city girl. (I read here that she was from Knoxville.) I wouldn't be surprised if there is a postpartum depression excuse here. But I am speculating . . . . (I think this is called "idle gossip", so I'll shut up.
If and when she rented the condo on the beach may be part of the pre-meditation?
I think McMinnville is pretty rural, too.
She grew up with the same core beliefs that he did. They both attended Freed Hardeman University, a university affiliated with the church of Christ in west Tennessee. There is no hint from his family background that he would be abusive. Anything is possible, but those that know both of them from college and in recent years are stunned.
Standing by for a 'burning bed' defense...
All that charisma isn't easy to deal with. Spiritually intimate counseling can lead to other intimate encounters.
Sad story.
If this were happening in Aruba instead of the US, the minister would not be considered murdered. It would have been found that he drank himself to death with sacremental wine served during services. The bullet holes in his body, however, would remain an unsolved mystery.
Is it? I may be confusing places. I think hubby and I drove through there once. The preacher at the church where hubby and I met is a preacher in McMinnville at a different Church of Christ.
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