Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other True Cases

  Something went horribly wrong, however, with this burn out. The car fishtailed into a light pole, and then plunged into the crowd, killing six young spectators, aged fifteen to twenty-two. Two of the dead were sisters. Twenty-three others were injured as the race car cut a swath through the crowd, trapping those who couldn’t run fast enough.

  All of Selmer wept, and on Sunday night a crowd gathered at the Sonic Drive-In on Mulberry Avenue to mourn the young victims. One of the teenage girls who was killed had been at work there just before the demonstration, leaving cheerfully to stand close to the road and watch the black smoke roil.

  Many people wrote to the Jackson Sun, placing blame on the sport, the fatal driver, the police, and even on the heedless spectators.

  A few lumped this tragedy in with the Winkler case, wondering what in the world Selmer was coming to.

  In actuality, there were no similarities between an ill-thought-out drag race and the shocking death of one of Selmer’s most admired citizens. Still, people tended to ask why so much that was dark and deadly descended on a little town in Tennessee.

  Both the dragster horror and the Winkler story made headlines all across America, causing complete strangers to ask the same thing.

  It was the first day of spring 2006 when the marriage of the Reverend Matthew Winkler and his wife, Mary Carol, teetered on the edge of catastrophe. The day was clear and somewhat cool, and daffodils and tulips in bloom were buffeted by the wind. Trees were just budding out, but their branches were essentially bare. In another few weeks it would be full spring, and the azaleas, irises, lilies, and crape myrtles would brighten up Selmer.

  The parsonage of Matthew’s church was a neat small house that sat above Mollie Drive in Selmer. It wasn’t lavish, but the one-story structure was cozy looking, built of brick, with four white columns in front and multipaned windows with black shutters. The home had a good-sized lot, but the Winklers’ lawn and shrubs showed signs of neglect; apparently neither of them had the interest or the time to worry about landscaping. The grass was raggedy, with raw patches of dirt, and there were no bulbs in bloom.

  Matthew, thirty-one, was the youth minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ, and Mary, thirty-two, appeared to be the perfect preacher’s wife, supporting him in all of his church duties. In this denomination, the husband’s role is far more important than the wife’s. Matthew made all the decisions, while Mary, if not actually obeying him, deferred to him in all matters.

  Quiet, sweet-voiced, Mary fit her role well. On Tuesday, March 21, she began her first day as a substitute teacher at the Selmer Elementary School. Although the pay wouldn’t be much, it would help their budget. Unless they are television evangelists, preachers don’t make large salaries, and Matthew and Mary had three little girls to raise: Patricia Dianne, eight, Mary Alice (called Allie), six, and Brianna, who had just had her first birthday.

  It would have taken a very large salary, however, to solve the Winklers’ financial woes. They were deeply in debt, both with their credit cards and because of an unfortunate business move.

  Media reports would refer to the Winklers as the “perfect all-American family,” but that is standard boilerplate journalism. People who live next door to serial killers always refer to them as “the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet,” or they say knowingly, after the fact, “I always thought there was something creepy about him.”

  Reporters never describe a family hit by violent tragedy as “a rotten, dysfunctional, family”—even when it is. They thrive, instead, on positive descriptions so they can counterpoint that image more effectively with whatever disaster has struck the family down.

  So couples viewed from the outside are invariably described as “loving, happy, and devoted.” Nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors, and it doesn’t matter at all if those shut away by walls and drapes are factory workers, doctors, lawyers, or preachers. All of these occupations have been populated from time to time by men and women whose lives suddenly erupted in scandal.

  Even so, a minister, his wife, and his children—a family moving in a world that is shaped by the church they serve—are expected to maintain a façade. That may be why any number of “PKs”—preachers’ kids—turn out to be wild and rebellious. They are so often teased by peers that they act out to show they’re just like anybody else.

  The preachers themselves have an equally hard row to hoe. It’s not easy for those who are supposed to teach by example to maintain a serenity that can often mask dissension and worries. And when they do have problems, ministers and their wives don’t have the luxury of confiding in members of the congregation. The people Matthew Winkler preached to wanted to believe in him, and they wanted to see Mary as a loyal, devoted, and contented wife.

  For a long time, the Winklers were able to be the couple that their families and their congregation wanted—even though they moved frequently (every time Matthew was called to a new church)…even though Mary suffered a miscarriage in 2003—between Allie’s birth and Brianna’s…even though they sometimes worried about money…and even though they had serious disagreements about the sexual part of their union.

  Matthew Winkler was a handsome, dark-haired man, six feet one inch tall. He had been extremely good-looking in college, when he attended Freed-Hardeman University, in Henderson, Tennessee. Now he was thick around the middle at 235 pounds, and he had lost his clean chin line. But he was still attractive, and he hadn’t lost his charisma. He was definitely the kind of preacher young people could identify with, and probably a few of the teenage girls in his congregation had a crush on him. His younger church members called him “Wink”—after his last name, and not because he was in any way a flirt. There was never even a whisper that he wasn’t faithful to his wife…or that she wasn’t faithful to him.

  Mary was both pretty and plain, if such a thing is possible. At five feet one, she was a full foot shorter than Matthew, and she weighed 150 pounds, although no one would have guessed she was that heavy. She carried it well with good posture, despite her full bosom. She had dark brown hair, cut in a short bob that wasn’t particularly flattering to her round face. Her high, rounded forehead gave her a resemblance to actresses Wynona Ryder and Christina Ricci. Her skin was lovely, she had even features, and she was very pretty when she smiled. She didn’t wear much makeup, which was to be expected of a preacher’s wife, and her preference in clothes was for something tailored rather than ruffled. Mary dressed in solid colors and often wore black and white.

  Her place was always just behind Matthew. He was the one who stirred church members with his sermons, while she taught Sunday school to toddlers.

  Matthew was usually smiling in his photographs, while Mary wasn’t. But then, maybe it’s easier to view her that way in retrospect, knowing what happened.

  Staff members at the Selmer Elementary School noticed that Mary Carol Winkler seemed nervous—even upset—on March 21. Apparently, her distress wasn’t due to her starting a new teaching job, but because of something else. Coworker Kacey Broadway noticed that Mary was talking a lot on her cell phone while she was at the grade school and that she paced nervously in the hallway as she did so. Some of the teachers complained about it. Once, Kacey thought that Mary was actually crying. She didn’t ask her any questions; that would be invading Mary’s privacy.

  Later that Tuesday, around four, Matthew was seen walking the Winklers’ dog in the city park. He wasn’t needed at the church that night.

  A bank officer in Selmer would recall talking to Mary several times on the twenty-first, and attempting to get a commitment from Mary that she and Matthew would come into the bank to discuss a puzzling overdraft in their account. Lots of families get into minor trouble when they don’t keep up with their checkbook entries.

  Other than that, there were no ominous forebodings that signaled trouble in the Winkler home. That would change the next day—March 22. Mary didn’t go to work, and their older daughters didn’t go to school either. They were
expected at softball practice at school later in the afternoon, but they didn’t show up. When neither Matthew nor Mary was present at Wednesday-night services, church members began to worry. They were always at church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings unless they called to say they were ill or had other pressing reasons not to attend. But they hadn’t phoned in, and calls to the parsonage went unanswered.

  Dr. William “Drew” Eason, who was both an elder in the congregation of the Fourth Street Church of Christ and a family friend, was concerned enough to drive to the Winklers’ Mollie Drive home shortly after 7:30 P.M. No one answered his knock, and the front door was locked. At 9 P.M. Dr. Eason returned, accompanied by three other church elders. They found a key hidden in a fishing tackle box, unlocked the door, and walked into the silent house, calling out for Matthew and Mary.

  None of their worries could have prepared them for the shock they experienced when they entered the master bedroom.

  Matthew was there, lying on his back on the floor between the four-poster bed and the bathroom. He was entangled in sheets, blankets, and pillows from the bed. The bedside table and a lamp with an elephant base and a tiny flame-shaped bulb were wedged between his still form and the closed bathroom door. It looked at first glance as though he had gotten out of bed, tripped, and fallen, grabbing at the table and the bedclothes as he collapsed heavily.

  Dr. Eason moved closer, however, and saw that there was pink-tinged white foam coming from Matthew’s nose and mouth. His eyes were open, but he was dead.

  What Drew Eason saw could not be real; it was as if the men had walked into a nightmare, one that didn’t compute with what they knew about their pastor.

  It was twenty minutes after nine when Eason called Selmer Police chief Neal Burks’s office to report that Matthew Winkler was dead and that his wife and children were missing. Burks and his men responded and realized almost at once that they would need help. They alerted detectives from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

  Roger Rickman, an investigator with the Selmer Police Department with a quarter century of police experience, was one of the first to arrive at the parsonage. He saw that Matthew Winkler had apparently died where he lay. He wore a red undershirt, a green long-sleeved shirt, and what could be called either pajama or lounging pants. The minister’s arms were flung out, with his right hand touching the bathroom door and the left extending under the bed. His right leg was straight and his left leg was bent at the knee so that his ankles were crossed.

  At first glance, there wasn’t much blood apparent, save for the froth from his mouth, which probably indicated some sort of injury to his lungs. But when the investigators turned the husky minister over, they found that he had lost almost all the blood in his body, bleeding out from a gunshot wound located to the left of his spinal column in the lower thoracic area, just above his waist. The bedding and the carpet beneath it were soaked with mostly dried blood. Whatever internal wounds Winkler had, his immediate cause of death would probably have been through exsanguination. He had bled to death.

  He could not have survived such an injury, even if emergency medical care had been summoned immediately, but it was possible that he might have been alive and conscious for a very brief period after he’d been shot. Only an autopsy could discover the full extent of his injuries.

  There was, of course, immediate concern for Mary Winkler and their three little girls. They weren’t anywhere in the house, and the family’s Toyota Sienna minivan was missing from the driveway. Had Matthew Winkler died trying to protect his family from someone who had broken into their home during the night before?

  Were Mary and the girls now hostages of a maniac?

  Every scenario that came to mind was terrifying.

  While most members of church congregations revere their ministers and their families, there are always those whose mental balance is a bit off center. Was there someone in the Fourth Street Church of Christ who had snapped suddenly, or even harbored a long-held hatred for the preacher? Had he killed Matthew before abducting his family? Or had some stranger broken into their home the night before? Both were ominous possibilities.

  If Matthew had been killed in a home-invasion robbery, something should be missing. And yet the detectives saw his money clip on the dresser with a good-sized wad of cash still in it. His driver’s license was there, too.

  A check of the other rooms in the house was a tiny bit reassuring; there were no signs of blood or struggle anyplace but in the master bedroom. Still, Winkler’s family was gone, and Mary hadn’t called to summon help for her husband. No one had heard from her—and that was frightening. One small woman and three little girls might be at the mercy of a killer, hurtling over highways hundreds of miles from home.

  The parsonage was cordoned off with crime-scene tape; officers were stationed to protect the outside premises throughout the night; and investigators worked inside to gather any evidence they could find that might lead to the person or persons who had shot the young preacher in the back with a high-powered weapon.

  The beginning of rigor mortis and the temperature of Matthew Winkler’s body indicated that he had probably been dead for more than twelve hours.

  In twelve hours, his family could be anywhere.

  John Vinson, the medical examiner of McNairy County, ordered the removal of Winkler’s body to Nashville, where a postmortem exam would be done as soon as possible.

  Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents Chris Carpenter and Mike Frizzell arrived near midnight. From the appearance of the single wound in Matthew Winkler’s back, all the detectives felt the death weapon had been a shotgun, fired from some distance away. There was no gun in the house or yard, though, which meant his murderer must have taken it along with Winkler’s family and vehicle.

  Investigator Rickman gathered and labeled some physical evidence carefully so the chain of evidence could be tracked. Dr. Vinson gave him a single shotgun pellet that he’d found on Winkler’s stomach when he lifted his shirt.

  TBI criminalist Donna Nelson, along with Lauren James, Erica Catherine, and Francesca Sanders, would process every corner of the crime scene. Briefed by Chris Carpenter on what was known so far, the forensic technicians would not find much that would help the investigators. The latent prints, body fluids, hairs, and fibers in the parsonage were traced back to the Winkler family, which, of course, was to be expected. The bedding, sleeping pillows, and decorative pillows were also gathered up, bagged, and labeled.

  The criminalists and the investigators processed the room where Matthew Winkler’s body had lain undiscovered all day Wednesday. It was a nice enough room, with white crown moldings and bifold French doors against a fabric-covered wall. All light was shut out by the closed wooden blinds, and no one could have peered in and seen the minister’s body lying there.

  In contrast to the white woodwork, the Winklers’ bedroom set was made of heavy dark wood. There was a sterile feel to the room, as if the occupants hadn’t cared enough to do much more than make the bed. It was like the lawn outside—very basic. Three months after Christmas, a wooden box with snowmen on it remained on a round stand near the bathroom door.

  The bulb on the lamp next to the bed wouldn’t have given off enough light to read by; maybe it had been used as a night-light. A combination light and ceiling fan whirled slowly as the investigators worked. They took photos of every corner of the crime scene, and then measured the room. When they cut out a large chunk of the wall-to-wall carpet between the bed and the bathroom, they found the subfloor beneath was also deeply stained with blood.

  Aside from the tangle of blankets Matthew Winkler had been wrapped in and the welter of blood beneath, there was no indication that there had been a struggle there. His autopsy would show that he had been shot just once—in the back—as he lay facedown, probably in the wide four-poster bed he shared with Mary. He might even have been sound asleep when he was shot. But he had been found lying on his back. Mary, even in desperation, could not possibly have
lifted him and turned him over, so he had lived long enough to make that last, massive effort to heave himself out of bed.

  Perhaps he had been trying to call for help? That would have been impossible. The white phone was on the floor several feet away from him, and its cord was unplugged—not from the wall, but from the phone itself, and the cord was coiled beneath his body.

  At 3 A.M., a nationwide Amber Alert was sent out by the Tennessee authorities. They used a smiling picture of the Winkler family they’d found in the house to help people recognize Mary and the three girls. These alerts are not issued lightly and are used only in cases where law enforcement agencies have reason to believe that the people missing are likely to be in extreme danger. Amber Alerts are usually employed to find missing or kidnapped children.

  Every possible media outlet now repeated information and descriptions of Mary Winkler and her daughters, and the family’s Sienna minivan. The picture of the perfect family flashed across TV screens and appeared on the front page of newspapers again and again. Illuminated signs along freeways also blazed with this information. If the minivan was on the main freeways, surely someone would spot it and call police.

  But if Mary and her little girls had been abducted, whoever had them would probably know that and switch vehicles soon, or at least steal other license plates, so lawmen had to work fast.

  Thursday dawned with no sightings of Mary Winkler and her three daughters. There were so many places where a minivan, perhaps holding the four bodies of the missing members of the family, could be hidden from view. Not knowing was somehow worse than knowing what had happened to them. The Reverend Dan Winkler, Matthew’s father; his mother, Dianne; his brothers, Dan and Jacob; Mary’s father, Clark Freeman; and Mary’s four adopted brothers and sisters needed every scintilla of their Christian faith as they waited for word, even as they mourned the loss of Matthew.