The Pastor's Wife (2 page)

The men found no answers to their questions about Mary and the girls.

Across the street, Sharyn Everitt's adult daughter looked out the front window and said, “What in the world is going on at the preacher's house?”

Sharyn herself looked out and saw four cars parked at the neighbors' house, then heard the first siren. A police cruiser and an ambulance turned onto Mollie Drive with flashing lights and shrieking wails, disrupting the peace of the quiet neighborhood. They drove up to the parsonage less than ten minutes after receiving the call from Drew.

Officers Tony Westbanks and Tony Miller of the Selmer Police Department made a quick assessment of the situation inside the master bedroom. They ushered the church members out into the front yard and called Police Chief Neal Burks.

The chief wanted twenty-year veteran detective Roger Rickman on the scene, but Roger had spent the day at home sick in bed, so miserable that he'd turned off his cell phone. When Burks called his detective and was routed straight to voicemail, he sent a police car to the Rickman house. An officer woke Roger, who rose, dressed, and arrived on Mollie Drive before 10 o'clock.

He entered the parsonage's master bedroom and saw Matthew Winkler on the floor beside the bed with bloody saliva coming from his mouth and nose. On the bed, he
saw another splotch of blood. A telephone drew his eyes away from the body. It sat on the floor out of Matthew's reach. The cord was not attached to the receiver—it would have been useless, even if the victim had been able to crawl and pick it up.

Roger photographed the room and the body, and reported the obvious signs of foul play to the police chief. Burks called for support from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). He knew a homicide investigation required experienced, expert forensic technicians. There simply wasn't enough violent crime in his town for his department to staff a team and a lab for forensic analysis. Less than half an hour after his arrival, Roger exited the home to await the state crime-scene investigators and technicians.

Questions arose in every mind.
Where was Mary Winkler? Where were the three little girls?
The members of law enforcement on the scene asked each other:
Was Mary a perpetrator or a victim?
Although an abduction scenario was possible, there were no signs of forced entry, and only the master bedroom showed any signs of disarray.

The church members who knew Mary could not imagine that she was responsible. All four members of Matthew's family had to have been kidnapped. Their thoughts turned to the many people who called to the preacher for help in times of need. Many were decent folks down on their luck. Others were drug users or worse, trying to take advantage of Matthew's compassion. Perhaps he denied assistance to someone who shot him in anger and abducted the family in a state of panic or a paroxysm of greed. The congregation waited for the ransom call.

Whether or not Mary played a role in her husband's death, one fact was apparent: Danger hung heavy over the three missing children. There was a long history of parents killing their progeny before committing suicide in similar situations.

Roger talked to Rodney Weaver, director of the West Tennessee Task Force. Weaver immediately got busy. His
“number one concern” was finding the wife and children alive. But in the back of his mind, he had “a feeling that Mary Winkler was a suspect.”

 

Sharyn Everitt and her daughter kept returning to the window to gaze out at the commotion across Mollie Drive. Within an hour, the street was lined with police vehicles.

Sharyn's mind flashed on a paranoid possibility:
What if someone is targeting preachers?
She called her pastor and told him what had happened, sharing her concern and urging him to be careful.

At 11
P.M.
, Special Agent Donna Nelson, forensic scientist for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, was called to duty at her home in Memphis. She phoned her team members, Lauren James, Erica Catherine and Francesca Sanders. They met at the Memphis Regional Crime Lab, loaded the Violent Crime Response Team truck and drove to Selmer.

Agent Chris Carpenter of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation walked into the house at 11:55
P.M.
Carpenter observed the body and lifted up the front of Matthew's shirt. There he found a single shotgun pellet. After photographing it in place, he sealed it in an evidence bag. He rolled the victim over and saw a gunshot wound in the middle of the preacher's back.

Carpenter collected items he thought might prove useful for finding the children: the victim's cell phone, billfold and personal items, as well as a family portrait. The photograph he selected was less than a year old. It displayed a happy family of five, all with brown eyes and brown hair. Matthew, the 30-year-old father, was tall, robust, with a strong jaw line, forceful chin and an engaging smile. By his side was his petite 31-year-old wife with a pixie-like face stretched wide with an infectious grin. In her arms she held the newest family addition, infant Breanna. In front of them, the two other daughters stood wearing identical sailor-styled dresses. The oldest girl, 8-year-old Patricia, had darker shoulder-length hair, a mischievous smile and a broad
face that resembled her father's. The middle child, Allie, had a lighter shade of hair and wore a thoughtful expression on a tiny face with pointed chin that looked just like her mother's. Carpenter headed out to scan the photo onto a computer and issue an AMBER Alert.

When the forensic team first arrived at the scene, Nelson spoke to Chief Burks and then entered the home to perform a walk-through with Agent Carpenter. She briefed her team and all four went inside to thoroughly sketch, photograph and videotape the crime scene.

Documentation complete, they located, marked and collected evidence—keeping it, for the time, inside the home. In Patricia and Allie's bedroom, testing revealed the presence of bloodstains on a pillow on each of the twin beds. The investigators confiscated both.

In the master bedroom, they took swabs from under Matthew's body and from the sheet on the bed. They bagged the sheet from the floor beside the victim.

In the kitchen, they identified a smear of blood in the trash can and took a swab as evidence. They tagged three computers and various papers in other parts of the home for collection. They hoped to locate a possible murder weapon, but none was found.

One of the church elders placed a phone call to the Freeman home in Knoxville. Mary's father Clark woke to answer the beckoning ring. “Matthew's been shot. He's dead. Your daughter and the three girls are missing.” Clark was immediately certain they'd been kidnapped.

 

Dan and Diane Winkler, Matthew's parents, did not receive the frantic calls to their residence. They were vacationing in a rented cabin near Gatlinburg, a small town surrounded on three sides by the natural beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

They had awoken that Wednesday morning to a wispy, smoke-like fog winding its tendrils around the ridges on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. Dan and Diane spent the day basking in the glory of God's creation—a peaceful interlude of contemplation, spiritual renewal and celebration. Today, March 22, was Dan Winkler's birthday.

In the last hour of that lovely day, the shrill ring of the telephone jarred them out of their contentment. For Dan and Diane, like most everyone, a late-night call stirred up dread. No one would call at this time of night unless it was bad news.

Their youngest son, Jacob, carried the burden of delivering the news of his brother's death to his father. Dan had no time to absorb that horrific reality before Jacob hit him
with another. Their son's wife and their three little granddaughters were missing.

Diane knew the news was bad by the expression on her husband's face. When he hung up the phone, he turned to her. “Diane, you need to sit down.”

“I don't want to sit down. I want to know what's going on.”

“Matthew's been shot.”

“Is he okay? Where was he?” Diane asked in a panicked voice.

“He's at home. He's been shot in the back.”

“Danny, he's okay, right? He's okay?”

Dan did not want to answer. He did not want to inflict pain on the woman who'd been by his side for so many years. The moment the words escaped his mouth, he couldn't deny the truth to himself. “No. No, he's not,” Dan said. “He's dead.”

Diane tried to call Mary's cell phone, but got no answer. The two packed their bags as they made a series of calls to family members and friends. They did not want anyone to learn of this tragedy on television or in the newspaper over their first cup of morning coffee.

They drove north to Interstate 40 and then headed west. They journeyed through the night, across the state on three hundred miles of tedious highway, their speeding car enveloped in darkness. When they reached the exit for State Route 22, they turned off and made the twenty-minute drive north to their home in Huntingdon.

They stopped at the house just long enough to change from their mountain resort clothing to more somber and befitting attire. Then, they made the hour-and-a-half trip south to the police station in Selmer. If they hoped to find news of fresh developments, they were disappointed. The whereabouts of their grandchildren and daughter-in-law were still unknown. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation continued to occupy their son's home in a search for answers. And Matthew still lay bloody and lifeless on the floor of his own bedroom.

Officers encouraged them to go home and wait, promising to call them if there was any news at all. Dazed, Dan and Diane drove back to Huntingdon to simmer in a stew of private agony, fear and prayer.

 

Russell Ingle, staff writer for the
Independent Appeal
, a weekly newspaper published since 1902, and the oldest existing business in McNairy County, received a phone call about the murder early in the morning of Thursday, March 23, while he was driving to work. He headed over to Mollie Drive, where yellow crime-scene tape surrounded the home. When he arrived, the only other media presence was a satellite uplink truck from a television station in Memphis. Soon, the number of press on the scene would be legion.

Russell spotted six marked and unmarked cars from the Selmer Police Department and TBI, as well as a white van from the State Medical Examiner's Office. Inside the house, the local, part-time medical examiner, a physician in the PrimeCare office in nearby Adamsville, determined that a large-caliber weapon—possibly a shotgun—caused the wound in Matthew's back. Russell watched from outside as the doctor supervised the removal of Matthew's body from the home and into the van. The vehicle backed down the driveway, heading northeast to Nashville for an autopsy.

 

Sharyn Everitt, unable to sleep, thought long and hard about what could have happened in the parsonage. By 2
A.M.
, she was convinced that Mary Winkler killed her husband and fled with the girls. Seconds after that epiphany, there was a knock on her front door. She greeted the first of many reporters.

 

That morning, law enforcement filed a search warrant in McNairy County General Sessions Court. The judge authorized the seizure of computers and any other evidence from the Winkler home that could help investigators find Matthew's missing family.

Donna Nelson and her forensic team loaded three computers, a black binder filled with family budget information, pillows, pillowcases, a sheet, shotgun pellets, swabs from the garbage can, a box of unused checks, various letters and bills and a copy of a check found in a trash can in the backyard.

All the serology evidence was taken to the lab in Memphis for further testing by team member Sanders. The computers headed to Nashville, where they were turned over to George Elliot for analysis in the lab there.

TBI left a copy of the search warrant and a list of items removed from the home on the kitchen counter with a note from TBI Agent Brent Booth:

A large check written from the Winkler account sent TBI investigators to Regions Bank in Selmer. They confirmed financial irregularities involving counterfeit checks. Mary's status as a victim showed its first signs of fracture.

TBI also obtained authorization for cell phone records and for a pen register—a tracking system that could pinpoint the general location of Mary's device. Unless she turned it off, authorities could use her cell to sniff out her whereabouts.

As law enforcement plunged into their investigation, the news flashed across the nation. Major networks and cable news channel sent reporters. Every local television station out of Memphis, Nashville and Jackson arrived in Selmer in their ponderous uplink trucks. The circus was in full swing.

At 1
P.M.,
Selmer police blockaded Mollie Drive.
Deprived of even a small glimpse of the Winkler home, the reporters and cameramen swarmed to the City Hall building that housed the police department on Second Street, downtown.

Half an hour later, John Mehr of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and Selmer Police Chief Neal Burks held their first press conference in front of City Hall. Mehr announced the joint operation to find Mary and the children. Working together, to this end, were members of the TBI, the local police department, the United States Marshals Service, the FBI, the postal inspector's office and the Secret Service.

Mehr and Burks provided the media with AMBER Alert information and computer links, urging them to inform the public that anyone who spotted the vehicle in question should call the local police department. “Do not approach the vehicle,” they cautioned. Investigators did not know if Mary and the girls were traveling alone or if they were the captives of an armed kidnapper. They promised the reporters regular briefings on the situation.

After the news conference, an Atlanta journalist stirred up hostility when he stood on the front steps of City Hall bad-mouthing the victim. “He probably slapped her around,” he said.

When he took it a step further by suggesting that Matthew's relationship with his daughters may have been inappropriate, a local resident took umbrage. “You're not from here, you didn't know them!” he shouted. “How can you question someone you don't even know?”

The offices of the
Independent Appeal
sat catty-corner from City Hall, giving Russell Ingle a bird's-eye view of the pandemonium. He knew the death of Matthew Winkler was a big story for his paper—he had no idea it would be that big for the world outside of Selmer. The first reporter to come knocking at his door worked for CNBC. Soon, a number of journalists were going in and out of the
Appeal
's offices seeking professional courtesies like the use of the Internet to file stories.

The demise of Matthew Winkler was not the only loss suffered by the Fourth Street Church of Christ on March 22, 2006. Another parishioner, Mary Anne Wilson King, a 49-year-old retired social worker and mother of two grown boys, passed away that day at the Methodist University Hospital in Memphis. She needed a bone marrow transplant to combat leukemia, but never got well enough to receive one. The church members' grief at her passage at such a young age was only compounded by the discovery of the body of their young minister.

News of the preacher's death rippled through Selmer the old-fashioned way—by word of mouth. The sadness that took hold of the town came hand-in-hand with stark fear.
Were Mary and the girls alive? Would they still be alive when they were found?

At the Fourth Street Church of Christ, black ribbons hung from the front door. All day the church remained open, filled with a never-ending parade of parishioners and friends seeking solace with each other and peace in the sanctuary itself. Prayers for the safety of Mary and the girls rose from their hearts in a steady stream.

In front of City Hall late that afternoon, officials again spoke to the media throng. It was a short press conference. There were no new developments. They reiterated their concern for the safety of Mary and her children, and their worry that someone else could be with them, holding them against their will. They still would not answer reporters' questions about how Matthew died.

Then the pen register that traced the activity on cell phones scored a hit. Mary—or at least her phone—was in the vicinity of Orange Beach, Alabama, a coastal city nearly 400 miles from Selmer.