Winkler Trial / 174 Mollie Dr. / 4th street Church of Christ
Town craves answers from Winkler trial
Jury selection in murder trial begins today in tiny SelmerBy LEON ALLIGOODStaff Writer
SELMER, Tenn. — Like many small towns, Selmer is steeped in predictability. Its 4,600 residents like it that way, knowing life usually plays out before them in a familiar script where the good guys are plentiful, the bad guys are few, where life is marked by school and church events.
But one year ago life became unpredictable. On the afternoon of Wednesday, March 22, 2006, a shotgun blast reverberated from a tidy brick home at 174 Mollie Dr.
The barrel of the 12-gauge was pointed at the back of Matthew Winkler, a popular minister at Fourth Street Church of Christ. Within 48 hours of his death, authorities announced that Mary Winkler, a quiet-spoken minister's wife and mother of three young daughters, was charged with the crime.
Her first-degree murder trial begins today with jury selection.
"Why?" Matthew Winkler asked his wife of 10 years as he fell from the bed, bleeding to death from a mortal wound. That is the narrative Mary Winkler told police after she was picked up for questioning in Orange Beach, Ala., where she fled in the family's Toyota van with her children.
The good people of this town want answers, too.
Was Mary Winkler the disaffected wife of a controlling preacher husband? Was she a battered spouse? Was she a victim of a Nigerian Internet scam that was leading her family to financial ruin? Did postpartum depression cloud her mental faculties?
"All we know is what's been hinted at. I guess Monday we'll know something, but I don't know that we'll like the answer," said Barry Pivinski, spending a recent morning working on the exterior of his home on Maple Street, just a few streets over from Mollie Drive.
"No matter how you cut it, this is a sad thing that's happened to any family, any town."
So much has been said
The murder has held Selmer captive for more than a year.
Reporters from around the world have come here to file stories about the preacher's wife facing a murder charge. Many have focused on the salacious aspects of this case: alleged spousal abuse.
Meanwhile, psychologists have weighed in with blogs and comments in mainstream articles about whether postpartum depression could have led Mary Winkler to take her husband's life. Several months before she became pregnant with her youngest daughter, court records indicate, Winkler suffered a miscarriage.
Then there were those cell-phone photographs last December of Mary Winkler smoking and drinking in a McMinnville restaurant and bar. Since being released on bond, she has lived in McMinnville with friends, working at a dry cleaner.
Church of Christ members have listened wearily as their denomination was characterized as male dominated, a place where women serve in biblical subservience to their husbands, leading to a situation in which Mary Winkler rebelled.
More recently, those who knew the Winklers have winced at new developments. Matthew Winkler's parents, Dan and Diane Winkler, have sued their daughter-in-law for the wrongful death of their son. The couple are seeking $2 million, a pre-emptive strike against Mary Winkler should she make a book or movie deal.
Winkler responded with a petition to gain custody of her daughters. They have been living with grandparents in Huntingdon, Tenn., since they were separated from their mother.
Day was unlike any other
Mollie Drive is a wooded neighborhood where hundreds of tall oaks stand as sentinels, spreading their branches in a protective gesture over the single-family homes below.
On the afternoon of March 22, 2006, police said, Matthew Winkler was last seen walking the family's dog about 3:30 p.m. at Selmer City Park, about a half-mile from his home. Afterward, he returned home to take a nap before the Wednesday night prayer service.
Mary Winkler, meanwhile, was last seen picking up her daughters at Selmer Elementary School at 4:45 p.m.
If anyone on Mollie Drive heard the gun's report that Wednesday afternoon, they apparently did not believe the noise was worth a call to the cops. Several hours passed before a string of police cars, their twirling blue lights illuminating the night, arrived.
Members of Fourth Street Church of Christ had summoned authorities to the parsonage. The church members had gone to the home to see what caused Matthew Winkler to miss the midweek prayer service at 7 p.m.
They found their pulpit minister dead.
In addition, Mary Winkler and the couple's daughters, ages 8, 6 and 1, could not be located, and the family's Sienna van was gone, too. Consequently, Selmer police requested help from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to issue an Amber Alert.
Finances were a problem
In previous court hearings, authorities alleged that the couple had been arguing about family finances the evening before the shooting.
Mary Winkler, who handled the couple's checkbooks, had shifted funds totaling $17,500 from one local bank to another in what a state lawman called a "check kiting scheme." The money came from bank accounts of unknown individuals in Canada and Nigeria, court testimony revealed.
The woman's defense attorneys, Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin, have disputed the portrait of their client as a con artist. Instead, they said, she was duped by a scam initiated by an e-mail she received.
According to TBI agent Brian Booth, who testified at a pretrial hearing, Mary Winkler apparently came to realize that she had placed the couple's finances in peril. The couple's argument the evening before the shooting was heated, he said.
Booth testified that Winkler told him: "He had really been on me lately, criticizing me for things — the way I walk, I eat, everything. It was just building up to a point. I was tired of it. I guess I got to a point and snapped."
Can jury be impartial?
Now the question is: Can a jury of McNairy County residents give Mary Winkler a fair trial?
"I don't know about that. I'd like to think she could get a fair trial here, but I don't know. I do know she's got two of the best defense attorneys in the country. I expect they don't come cheap, but I think they'll do well for her," said Jimmy Davis, owner of Smack Ya'self BBQ in downtown Selmer.
"I think people are just getting a little tired of it," he added, chopping pieces of pulled pork to go on a sandwich.
"You hear so much that you just don't know who or what to believe on the subject. I know I don't know what to believe."
On Wednesday afternoon, kindergartners from Selmer Elementary School scurried around the city park carrying Easter baskets as they hunted colored plastic eggs hidden by parents.
Sequoia Hively watched from a distance as her young son, Lucas, searched the grass for hidden treats. There is one thing about the Winkler case that really bothers her, she said, the afternoon breeze lifting her hair.
"I'm not going to ever do anything that's going to take myself away from my kids. I know she may have felt pressure, but there's always another way to take care of a situation like that," she said.
"I don't know if she can get a fair trial here. I think it might even be hard to find a jury that hasn't already formed an opinion about this case. I think it will be difficult. It's been on this town's mind for so long now."
Tennessean.com and its related sites are pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the Internet makes it impracticable for our staff to monitor each and every posting. Since Tennessean.com does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our Web site. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not Tennessean.com or its related sites. All comments posted should comply with the Tennessean.com's terms of service
SELMER, Tenn. — Like many small towns, Selmer is steeped in predictability. Its 4,600 residents like it that way, knowing life usually plays out before them in a familiar script where the good guys are plentiful, the bad guys are few, where life is marked by school and church events.
But one year ago life became unpredictable. On the afternoon of Wednesday, March 22, 2006, a shotgun blast reverberated from a tidy brick home at 174 Mollie Dr.
The barrel of the 12-gauge was pointed at the back of Matthew Winkler, a popular minister at Fourth Street Church of Christ. Within 48 hours of his death, authorities announced that Mary Winkler, a quiet-spoken minister's wife and mother of three young daughters, was charged with the crime.
Her first-degree murder trial begins today with jury selection.
"Why?" Matthew Winkler asked his wife of 10 years as he fell from the bed, bleeding to death from a mortal wound. That is the narrative Mary Winkler told police after she was picked up for questioning in Orange Beach, Ala., where she fled in the family's Toyota van with her children.
The good people of this town want answers, too.
Was Mary Winkler the disaffected wife of a controlling preacher husband? Was she a battered spouse? Was she a victim of a Nigerian Internet scam that was leading her family to financial ruin? Did postpartum depression cloud her mental faculties?
"All we know is what's been hinted at. I guess Monday we'll know something, but I don't know that we'll like the answer," said Barry Pivinski, spending a recent morning working on the exterior of his home on Maple Street, just a few streets over from Mollie Drive.
"No matter how you cut it, this is a sad thing that's happened to any family, any town."
So much has been said
The murder has held Selmer captive for more than a year.
Reporters from around the world have come here to file stories about the preacher's wife facing a murder charge. Many have focused on the salacious aspects of this case: alleged spousal abuse.
Meanwhile, psychologists have weighed in with blogs and comments in mainstream articles about whether postpartum depression could have led Mary Winkler to take her husband's life. Several months before she became pregnant with her youngest daughter, court records indicate, Winkler suffered a miscarriage.
Then there were those cell-phone photographs last December of Mary Winkler smoking and drinking in a McMinnville restaurant and bar. Since being released on bond, she has lived in McMinnville with friends, working at a dry cleaner.
Church of Christ members have listened wearily as their denomination was characterized as male dominated, a place where women serve in biblical subservience to their husbands, leading to a situation in which Mary Winkler rebelled.
More recently, those who knew the Winklers have winced at new developments. Matthew Winkler's parents, Dan and Diane Winkler, have sued their daughter-in-law for the wrongful death of their son. The couple are seeking $2 million, a pre-emptive strike against Mary Winkler should she make a book or movie deal.
Winkler responded with a petition to gain custody of her daughters. They have been living with grandparents in Huntingdon, Tenn., since they were separated from their mother.
Day was unlike any other
Mollie Drive is a wooded neighborhood where hundreds of tall oaks stand as sentinels, spreading their branches in a protective gesture over the single-family homes below.
On the afternoon of March 22, 2006, police said, Matthew Winkler was last seen walking the family's dog about 3:30 p.m. at Selmer City Park, about a half-mile from his home. Afterward, he returned home to take a nap before the Wednesday night prayer service.
Mary Winkler, meanwhile, was last seen picking up her daughters at Selmer Elementary School at 4:45 p.m.
If anyone on Mollie Drive heard the gun's report that Wednesday afternoon, they apparently did not believe the noise was worth a call to the cops. Several hours passed before a string of police cars, their twirling blue lights illuminating the night, arrived.
Members of Fourth Street Church of Christ had summoned authorities to the parsonage. The church members had gone to the home to see what caused Matthew Winkler to miss the midweek prayer service at 7 p.m.
They found their pulpit minister dead.
In addition, Mary Winkler and the couple's daughters, ages 8, 6 and 1, could not be located, and the family's Sienna van was gone, too. Consequently, Selmer police requested help from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to issue an Amber Alert.
Finances were a problem
In previous court hearings, authorities alleged that the couple had been arguing about family finances the evening before the shooting.
Mary Winkler, who handled the couple's checkbooks, had shifted funds totaling $17,500 from one local bank to another in what a state lawman called a "check kiting scheme." The money came from bank accounts of unknown individuals in Canada and Nigeria, court testimony revealed.
The woman's defense attorneys, Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin, have disputed the portrait of their client as a con artist. Instead, they said, she was duped by a scam initiated by an e-mail she received.
According to TBI agent Brian Booth, who testified at a pretrial hearing, Mary Winkler apparently came to realize that she had placed the couple's finances in peril. The couple's argument the evening before the shooting was heated, he said.
Booth testified that Winkler told him: "He had really been on me lately, criticizing me for things — the way I walk, I eat, everything. It was just building up to a point. I was tired of it. I guess I got to a point and snapped."
Can jury be impartial?
Now the question is: Can a jury of McNairy County residents give Mary Winkler a fair trial?
"I don't know about that. I'd like to think she could get a fair trial here, but I don't know. I do know she's got two of the best defense attorneys in the country. I expect they don't come cheap, but I think they'll do well for her," said Jimmy Davis, owner of Smack Ya'self BBQ in downtown Selmer.
"I think people are just getting a little tired of it," he added, chopping pieces of pulled pork to go on a sandwich.
"You hear so much that you just don't know who or what to believe on the subject. I know I don't know what to believe."
On Wednesday afternoon, kindergartners from Selmer Elementary School scurried around the city park carrying Easter baskets as they hunted colored plastic eggs hidden by parents.
Sequoia Hively watched from a distance as her young son, Lucas, searched the grass for hidden treats. There is one thing about the Winkler case that really bothers her, she said, the afternoon breeze lifting her hair.
"I'm not going to ever do anything that's going to take myself away from my kids. I know she may have felt pressure, but there's always another way to take care of a situation like that," she said.
"I don't know if she can get a fair trial here. I think it might even be hard to find a jury that hasn't already formed an opinion about this case. I think it will be difficult. It's been on this town's mind for so long now."
Tennessean.com and its related sites are pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the Internet makes it impracticable for our staff to monitor each and every posting. Since Tennessean.com does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our Web site. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not Tennessean.com or its related sites. All comments posted should comply with the Tennessean.com's terms of service
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