The Pastor's Wife (11 page)

Monday evening, Tom Cauley, director of the McNairy County Chamber of Commerce, was preparing to leave his office in the building next to the Shackleford Funeral Home when he heard an unusually high level of traffic noise outside. He investigated and discovered that his car was blocked by satellite trucks and other media vehicles arriving from every direction.

He approached the vehicles hemming him in and said to the drivers, “If you all will just let me move my car, you can have my whole parking lot.” It wasn't sleepy old Selmer any longer. With Matthew's funeral scheduled for Tuesday, he wondered if he'd be able to get to work.

At the funeral home, a line of mourners snaked through the building and out the door. One hundred people stood inside. Another hundred and fifty queued up on the sidewalk.

There was no grieving widow to comfort and hug. Mary's absence—and the reason for it—added to the oppressive atmosphere in the room where Matthew lay in a bed of satin.

Patricia and Allie, accompanied by a flock of family members, walked over to the casket. The girls sobbed and reached out to stroke his cheek, pat his head, touch his hands. Patricia cried out, “Daddy, why did you leave us?”

The adults around her fell into painful silence. As her Great Aunt Linda put an arm around her shoulder, a moan,
deep and heavy, laden with sorrow, rose from Patricia's throat. All across the viewing room, hearts broke at the terrible sound of the small child's immense pain.

The next morning, with the approval of Dan and Diane Winkler and law enforcement, Mary was escorted from her jail cell to the funeral chapel. The widow stood by her husband's casket alone and cried silent tears before being taken back to lock-up.

Soon after that visit, Mary's attorney Steve Farese appeared on the
Today
show. He said his client was “very detached from the gravity of the overall situation, very reserved, very quiet, very confused and overwhelmed.”

 

Hundreds gathered at the Fourth Street Church of Christ for the 11
A.M.
funeral service of Matthew Brian Winkler. The 500-seat sanctuary was filled to capacity. In a room in the church basement, the overflow crowd watched the service on closed-circuit television monitors.

News media were not allowed inside. As a local,
Independent Appeal
reporter Russell Ingle would have been admitted, but he chose not to enter the sanctuary. He didn't know Matthew personally and didn't want to make anyone there uncomfortable because of his job.

Dan and Diane Winkler followed Matthew's flower-covered casket into the church. With them were the three innocent and bewildered young girls, 8-year-old Patricia, 6-year-old Allie and 1-year-old Breanna.

The two oldest went up to the coffin again and touched their father. When she returned to the pew, Patricia asked her grandmother, “Nana, will the police find the person that killed my daddy?”

“Yes,” she assured her, “the police will get the person who killed your daddy.”

“Nana, that person broke my heart,” the little girl said.

Dan Winkler and family friend Eddie Thompson led the service. Dan had conducted many funeral ceremonies in his long years as a preacher, but never thought he'd do so for one of his own sons. Matthew's brothers Daniel and
Jacob each read a passage from scripture. Dan delivered the eulogy, sharing memories of his son from his birth to his death. There were occasional light anecdotes, but most of his talk bore a serious tone as he reflected on Matthew as a devoted husband and father. “Matthew was a fine, loving person, but his life was cut short,” he said as intense emotion crackled through his voice.

At 11:55, the mourners exited from the church to confront a mob of media. Most ignored the cameras and microphones pointed in their direction. Eddie Thompson, though, paused to respond to questions about Matthew's daughters. He said, “They're having peaks and valleys, but by and large, they're incredibly happy. We love these girls dearly.” He gave details about the special fund, set up under Tennessee's Minor's Trust laws, to pay for the necessary counseling and education for the three fatherless girls. Elders of the Fourth Street Church of Christ paid for the expense of the fund's website so that more money could go to Patricia, Allie and Breanna.

Many of those who attended that morning followed the funeral procession on its sixty-mile route to Carroll Memorial Gardens on Highway 22 in McKenzie, near the elder Winklers' home in Huntingdon. By his son's final resting place, Dan said, “Our family isn't the first to go through something like this. King David lost two sons at the hands of others. God Himself knows what this is like.”

In fifteen minutes, Dan closed the graveside ceremony with prayer. He hugged and kissed each of his three granddaughters. Patricia and Allie both picked a flower from the elaborate arrangement on top of the casket, holding them close to their chests as they returned to the car.

The courtroom in Selmer filled again on Thursday, March 30, for the scheduled preliminary hearing. Before the proceedings began, Mary's father Clark stepped up to the defense table, placed his hand on his daughter's shoulder and cradled the left side of her neck. He whispered into her right ear. Mary nodded in response.

When the court was called to order, Steve Farese addressed the judge. “May it please the court, Your Honor, at this time, after conversing with my client and co-counsel, we have decided to waive this opportunity for a preliminary hearing.”

Judge Gray turned to Mary. “Ms. Winkler, would you stand for a moment, please? As I mentioned before, you are represented by very experienced and capable attorneys, but I need to make sure that you do understand that you are knowingly and voluntarily waiving your right to a preliminary hearing after having a chance to speak to Mr. Ballin and Mr. Farese. Is it your desire at this point to waive your right to a preliminary hearing?”

In a child-like voice, Mary said, “Yes, sir.”

After a brief sidebar, the judge made sure Mary understood that her case would be remanded to a grand jury. “I also understand from your attorney that you will not be seeking bond today.”

“That is correct, Your Honor,” Farese answered for his client.

The grand jury set to meet in June would decide if there was enough evidence to support the murder charge.

 

On the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, Farese and Ballin paused to speak with the media. When the reporters asked why they did not want a preliminary or bail hearing for Mary, Farese said, “She still has trouble focusing on important issues.”

Ballin added, “Her condition is pretty fragile right now, and we are concerned about it. Also, a case like this, where Mary's state of mind at the time of the event is an issue, we want to have a forensic psychological examination, and it should be done real soon. And we think it's in her best interests to not have bail right now.

“I want to say something else: In this type of case, it's like a marathon. This is not a sprint. We are going to come out of this, as you've seen today, very slowly and methodically, and hopefully we're going to do the right thing for Mary's case.”

Farese interrupted. “There is another consideration here, also. And that's the consideration of the Winkler children. We feel it does no one any good to hear bad things about the mother of children. We don't think it does anyone good to hear gruesome things about their late father. We don't think it does Matthew Winkler's parents, kin, people, any good to have to suffer any more than they've already suffered.

“This is not a circus. This is a legal proceeding. It happens all over the free world every day. And all we want is a fair trial for Mary Carol Winkler. We don't want the field tilted in any way. All we want is a fifty–fifty shot at representing her to the best of our ability.”

When asked if Mary was on suicide watch, Farese said, “I am concerned about her emotional state. One of those concerns is whether she would harm herself.”

Ballin added that he had faith in the professionalism and judgment of the McNairy County Sheriff's Depart
ment. The defense team had the utmost faith in the department's ability to protect Mary from herself, he said.

That evening, the two attorneys appeared on the Greta Van Susteren show on the Fox News network. Greta asked Ballin, “Leslie, why didn't you have a preliminary hearing today, which would have required the prosecution to lay out part of its case?”

“Didn't need it,” Leslie Ballin said. “We knew what the charges were. We anticipated what the prosecution was going to put on, as far as proof. We talked to the prosecutor about giving us some early discovery, which she graciously agreed to do. Plus, there were some other issues concerning what the proof was going to be.

“Mr. Winkler has recently been buried. The grieving continues and will continue for a long, long time to come. For that family to hear details of what happened just wasn't going to do any good, especially for those three young kids.”

She turned then to Farese. “Steve, if I saw your client in the cellblock today and I had a conversation, what would be my impression of her?”

“Your impression would be someone that's, at this point in time, very withdrawn, very reserved, having difficulty understanding your questions contextually, the deer-in-the headlights sort of look.”

“Leslie, do you agree with that?” she asked Ballin.

“Yes. And she is at times lost in space. You talk to her, she doesn't follow a lot of the theme, the subject matter that you're wanting to talk about. And she's kind of bewildered at times.”

Farese said it wasn't a circus, but to outside observers, it certainly appeared as if the curtain had risen on the first act in the defense of Mary Winkler.

On March 31, McNairy County deputies transported Mary Winkler to the office of clinical psychologist Dr. Lynne Zager in Jackson. When she received the call from the defense team to evaluate Mary's mental condition and her competency to stand trial, the doctor was excited. She remembered when she listened to the news of Mary's arrest on the radio in her car. Mary, she thought, might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Zager would have the opportunity to investigate that possibility first-hand. Even after twenty-four years of forensic evaluation, Zager found this case very interesting. She agreed without hesitation to provide her services
pro bono
.

Zager started the first session with Mary by explaining the limits of confidentiality under these circumstances. She informed Mary that she was granting permission to Zager to reveal anything they discussed to the defense team, and if the case went to trial, everything Mary said could be repeated in open court.

Although cordial, polite and willing to answer questions about her social history, Mary would not look Dr. Zager in the eye when they talked. Zager administered the Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a psychological assessment tool with 567 questions designed to uncover anyone who was either trying to paint a falsely positive picture or appear mentally ill when they are not.

Zager found significant defensiveness in her client, and
determined that Mary was attempting to appear as if she did not have any mental health issues. Beneath that denial, Zager concluded that Mary did have problems in her thinking, trusting and psychological functioning.

 

On Sunday, April 2, Mary Winkler greeted more than a dozen visitors at the McNairy County jail, including her father and two of her sisters. Friends from the church brought in cards from members who were unable to come. That day, like every day of her incarceration, Mary wrote a letter to her daughters. She never mentioned the events that led to their separation, but she assured the girls that she loved and missed them.

For the few days that followed, it seemed as if Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin were everywhere. One or the other—or both—held court on television, doing their best to sway public opinion in their client's favor.

On April 3, they appeared on
Larry King Live
, where Ballin said, “Everything that she is, is inconsistent with the charges.”

To the amusement of the cosmopolitan host Larry King, Farese brought his folksy flair to the interview: “My father always says, ‘If
ifs
and
but
s were candy and nuts, what a merry Christmas it would be.' And it truly would be a merry Christmas for the prosecution if all the speculation from them was true, but it's certainly not true.”

Ballin expanded on his earlier statement, saying, “This is so inconsistent with what twenty-nine years of the practice of law has taught me. Certainly, you have the off-case where a good person commits a crime, but in this particular case, it's just so unusual. I don't have a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound, six-foot-five, tattooed, one-eyed defendant sitting behind me. This is just unusual. It isn't supposed to happen.”

Another guest on the show, Tennessee's Chief Medical Examiner Doctor Bruce Levy, snatched the focus away from Mary and put it back on the victim, saying that Matthew essentially bled to death. “A shotgun is full of many small
metallic pellets. When they strike the body, it's like a billiard-ball effect; they go in every direction, and they strike pretty much all the internal organs and cause lots and lots of bleeding, both internally and externally.”

 

Steve Farese appeared on the
Nancy Grace
show on April 6. As a rule, Nancy, a former prosecutor, had little patience with defense attorneys, and Farese was no exception. Her tone was immediately hostile. “When I asked you the other night, ‘Did your client get a chance to visit her husband's body before he was buried?' you had not talked to her at that time. Now that you've spent a day in court with her, did she get to say goodbye to her husband one last time?”

“Nancy, I did get to talk to her today, and intentionally did not ask that question.”

“Why? Why? Why?”

Mocking her repetition, Farese said, “I thought you might want to know the answer. Know the answer. Know the answer.”

“Is it because you don't want people to know that she got out of jail to visit her husband?” she pressed. “I mean, why would you want to keep that a secret?”

Farese responded with a non-answer. “That doesn't interest me whether she did or did not get out of jail.”

“Well, you just said you intentionally didn't ask, so obviously you'd been thinking about it a lot.”

“No, I intentionally didn't ask, because it didn't enter my mind to ask.”

“But you just said you intentionally didn't ask, so obviously you thought about it, so it did enter your mind.”

“Nancy…”

The host interrupted. “You've been thinking about it, and you've been thinking about me a lot.”

“Guess what?”

“Yeah?”

“You're right on both accounts.”

Nancy then moved on to badger McNairy County Sher
iff Rick Roten. He wouldn't comment on the funeral home visit, either, insisting that it was a private matter.

Farese and Ballin did scores of other interviews including
Dateline NBC
and
People
magazine. But of all the inquisitors they faced, the only one they refused to consider for a repeat performance was Nancy Grace. They said that they didn't think she was “very nice.”

In another show about the Winkler case, she asked a Baptist minister what he knew about the churches of Christ.

“It's, unfortunately, a very legalistic sect, and they tend to use methods of intimidation and pressure,” he said. He added that the churches of Christ believe that they and they alone have the key to heaven's gate.

Nancy responded, “You make it sound like a cult.”

“It's kind of a borderline cult, unfortunately.”

Church of Christ adherents across the country were up in arms. Even those who hadn't seen the show heard about it from friends or read about it in a churches of Christ publication,
The Christian Chronicle
.

The editorial board of that periodical expressed their shock at the comments on Nancy's show, writing:

They ended their long opinion piece with an admonition to the flock:

Fair or not, it was clear that the church would be on trial as well as Mary Winkler when the court convened in McNairy County.

 

Back at the jail, a different kind of media excitement was underway. Nearby Hardeman County resident Robert King, an employee of New York–based Polaris Images, had an assignment to shoot pictures for
People
magazine.

According to the sheriff's department, King came into the jail with Mary's attorneys. He signed in as an investigator. Once inside, he took photographs of Mary. No one is certain if the lawyers knew about this ruse or not.

There had to have been a lot of legal wrangling in the prosecutor's office, because an indictment charging him with impersonation of a private investigator was not handed down for ten months. Once it was, an arrest warrant was issued by the sheriff's department, and Robert King faced a potential prison sentence of one to two years.