The wife of slain Tennessee minister Matthew Winkler has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she confessed to shooting him in the back inside the church-owned home where the family lived, authorities said Friday.
Selmer Police investigator Roger Rickman said during a morning news conference that Mary Freeman Winkler, 32, admitted to police that she killed her husband on Wednesday, then drove to Alabama with the couple's three young daughters. Spokesmen from two of the three investigating agencies disagree, however, about whether the children were in the home at the time of the shooting.
Rickman said the children's paternal grandfather, Dan Winkler, minister of the Huntingdon, Tenn., church, was in Baldwin County, Alabama on Friday petitioning for at least temporary custody of the children. The court approved his request, and he planned to take Patricia, 8; Mary Alice, 6; and Breanna, 1, home that evening.
Dan Winkler spoke to reporters after the custody hearing, thanking the public for their support and prayers.
"Now we want to turn our attention to remembering our son and to the care of three young children," Dan Winkler said.
