The Pastor's Wife (3 page)

Brilliant white-sand beaches grace the Alabama seashore resort town of Orange Beach. It sits on a jutting peninsula where turquoise waters lap the sand with gentle waves.

Although a small city of only 5,500 residents, it has experienced record growth in the last decade. In March of each year, the population swells with the addition of a steadily growing influx of spring breakers. The 2006 Surf & Turf Jet Ski event scheduled to begin on Friday added to the charged atmosphere in the resort town that week.

Officer Jason Whitlock of the Orange Beach Police Department traveled the roads with Reserve Officer Stephen Jerkins. They received the AMBER Alert notice and the known details of the murder in the middle of their shift on Thursday, March 23. Whitlock didn't know if he was looking for three children accompanied by a woman who shot her husband, or for a kidnapper with four victims. He did, however, know the precise vehicle he sought, including its license plate number.

Near the end of the shift, Whitlock and Jerkins spotted a vehicle matching the description of the Winkler mini-van traveling westbound on Perdido Beach Boulevard. The driver made an illegal U-turn right in front of them, and they realized it bore the right license plate number. Whitlock followed it while Jerkins called in for back-up. Whitlock could not determine the presence of the chil
dren, nor could he tell with any certainty if the driver was the only adult inside.

At 7:30
P.M.
, Officers Woodruff, Beaman and Long responded to the call for back-up and three marked police cars with flashing blue lights joined Whitlock and Jerkins. Whitlock pulled the mini-van over in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie grocery store and they approached it with drawn guns. One officer knocked on the window and Mary rolled it down. The officers screamed at her, “Get out of the van! Get out of the van!”

At the sound of raised voices, the two K-9 dogs on the scene barked and strained at their leashes. The three frightened little girls burst into tears. The officers shouted again, ordering Mary to step out of her vehicle, hold her hands up in the air and walk backwards toward them.

She complied with hesitation, as if fearful she would do the wrong thing. Her flip-flops slapped the pavement as she approached the officers in her pink sweat suit. Whitlock snapped handcuffs on Mary's wrists and Officer Travis Long put her in the back of his patrol car. He recited Miranda warnings. As Mary listened, she demonstrated no signs of distress. In fact, she appeared relieved.

While Long secured Mary, Whitlock approached the Sienna van with caution and saw the three girls—they were alone. He tried to comfort and calm them.

Allie said, “Our daddy is in the hospital. A bad man had robbed us in our house and hit our daddy. And Mommy and us ran from the man.” Then she added, “Mommy took a gun to protect us from the bad man.”

Patricia repeated the same story. Long unfastened the restraining buckles on the seat belts of the two littlest girls, speaking to them in a soft, soothing voice and removed all three from the mini-van, placing them in the back seat of a patrol car.

In another police vehicle, Officer Long asked Mary if she had any relatives in the area who could take care of the children while she went to the police station for
questioning. She said she did not, but gave him the names and telephone numbers of her in-laws in Huntingdon, Tennessee. Throughout the conversation, Mary never asked why he detained her. She never mentioned a thing about her husband. There were no signs of sadness or dread. Long found her lack of emotion odd as he transported her to the city jail.

Lieutenant Investigator Steve Brown arrived on the scene and gave the authorization to detain Mary, and Whitlock and Jerkins climbed back into their patrol car. Whitlock looked back at Mary and saw her blank stare—a face devoid of emotion. He thought Mary appeared exhausted and maybe even relieved that her flight was now over. When he drove off to transport her to the city jail, Mary lay down in the back seat and immediately fell asleep. She did not say a word along the way. Of the $500 she had when she left home, just $123 remained.

Learning that the girls had been on their way to the Waffle House for dinner when the van was stopped, the officers took them to McDonald's to eat. Afterwards, at the station house, they gave the children stuffed animals to cuddle. Officers' wives came in and kept the children busy watching movies and playing games.

 

Informed that Mary was in the custody of the Orange Beach police, Corporal Stan Stabler, agent with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, arrived at the police station around 10
P.M.
First, he spoke with 8-year-old Patricia and 6-year-old Allie.

Patricia told him that she heard a loud noise and went to her parents' bedroom. “I thought Daddy fell and knocked over the night stand.” She saw her father lying face down on the floor and heard him say, “Call 9-1-1.”

As Stabler was leaving the room, Patricia stopped him and asked his name, saying that she wanted to put him on “my list of people I talk to.” Stabler stifled the surge of emotion he felt, and promised to return a little later and help her with the spelling.

Back in Selmer, Agent John Mehr and Police Chief Neal Burks stepped out of the station to speak with the media. Mehr said, “Just in the last few minutes, we've gotten news that they've been stopped in Orange Beach, Alabama, by the Orange Beach Police Department. The wife and the three children are okay, and we are sending a team of agents to Alabama at this time, and working with the Orange Beach Police Department to go through the van and see what the other details are.” He offered no answers to reporters' questions, but said, “We're happy that the children and her are alive and well.”

The word quickly traveled to the church members gathered in the sanctuary for a special service they'd called to pray for the safe return of the preacher's wife and his daughters.

 

With Special Agent Steve Stuesher from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Stabler entered the interrogation room, starting the tape recorder and beginning his interview with Mary Winkler at 9:55
P.M.
He observed his subject carefully, looking for any signs of intoxication. Seeing none, he read the waiver of rights form to her. Mary agreed to sign it.

After getting basic biographical information, he assured Mary that her children were fine. “They've had McDonald's,
they ate and they're wrapped up in blankets, warm, watching a movie.”

“Thank you,” Mary said with a smile.

“They're concerned about Mom. I told them you were fine, and we were fixing to come in here and talk with you, too.” Stabler moved on with the questioning. “How long have you been married?”

“Nine years, eleven months,” Mary said.

“How was your marriage?”

“Good.”

Noticing Mary's mouth appeared dry, he inquired about her thirst and got her water, at her request. He gave her time to stand and stretch, then resumed in earnest. “Is that a little better?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, great. All right. We'll kind of pick up from where we left off, okay? So you've been married nine years and eleven months? Okay, and, now, I've been married seventeen years myself, and it's not my first marriage. Is this your first marriage?”

“Yes,” Mary said.

“Okay. First and only, huh?”

“Right.”

“Now, I know couples are going to have squabbles, that's typical, that's normal, but y'all didn't have any major, major problems going on?”

“No.”

“None whatsoever?” Stabler asked. “Okay, anybody else involved with either party?”

“Oh, no.”

“Okay. How were y'all financially?”

“Um, getting through,” Mary said.

Stabler asked a few questions about their income and her schooling, and then asked, “When's the last time you talked to him?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Where was that at?”

“Home.”

“Home? Okay. What did y'all discuss?”

“No real conversation,” Mary said, fumbling for an answer. “Um, just no comment. I don't know.”

Stabler spoke to Mary about her inability to change the past, and the possibility of controlling her future by making the right decisions today. As he talked, he studied Mary, looking for any emotion other than the eerie calm that seemed to possess her. “I'm just going to be frank with you. You need to talk with us. We need to work all this out, okay? You need to think about your girls, the baby, yourself. Okay? What, what was going on? What was the problem? I want to hear your side. I want you to tell me what was troubling you so much.”

Mary was not able or willing to reveal anything. “I feel like you have genuine concern, and I do appreciate you, uh, I'm just not to that right now.”

Stabler said, “I know that, you know, a lot of things can happen between people. I know, a lot of times, mental state, emotions, everything comes into play. And it's tough. It is tough being married sometimes these days. I mean, society itself has made it tough. I think there's a reason, I mean, I know there's got to be a reason that all of this had happened. I just, you know, we're kind of tasked with trying to figure this stuff out, but, there's only one person that really knows why, and it's you. We want to help you, but I don't know where to start, because I don't know what's going on. It's your life.”

“I just…” Mary began.

“I mean, I don't even know. I didn't know exactly what or how to even talk to your little girls a little bit, you know?”

“I appreciate it,” Mary said, turning the conversation to her girls. “I was sitting in there, and at first, I thought,
Who in the world would have children down here at this hour?
And I thought,
Well, they're getting paperwork done and they had their kids with them.
And then at some point, I heard or understood the voices coming that way. And those men were very nice, and, you know, I felt like, I thought I
was chained to one particular area and I about did a back-flip to get out of—because I was in the line of sight, and so I really appreciated we took care of that before they saw me, but, anyway, I heard their voices. I heard Allie going on about something. That is, uh, right now, just shock and whatever emotion, I don't know, but that those three right there are my only concern right now.”

“I know. I know,” Stabler reassured her.

“When can Nana and Poppa get here?”

“They told me they were in the mountains, and they're our concern, too.”

“Nana can take care of them, but I do appreciate that.”

“Okay, all right. Will you do this for me? When you're ready to tell me why, what's troubling you, will you do that? Without telling me why, or the troubles that were going on, would you tell me what happened?”

“I haven't been told really anything myself. I don't know,” Mary said, denying her knowledge of the events that occurred in her home the day before.

“Mary?”

“Hmm?”

“I talked with the girls a little bit, okay?”

“Hmm.”

“And they told me what they've seen and heard.”

“Right,” Mary acknowledged without giving an inch.

“Okay. I need you to fill in those gaps a little bit. Well, all three know, to an extent, what's taken place.”

“What did you ask me?”

“To tell me what happened,” Stabler answered.

“Uh-huh, just not right now.”

Stabler reminded her again of her children, of her unconditional love for the girls and her willingness to sacrifice for them. Special Agent Stuesher added, “You can tell by just the few minutes that we spent with them that you've taught them well.”

“Yeah, you'd be proud of them,” Stabler offered. “They're very fine young ladies.”

“Very polite. Have manners,” Stuesher said.

“They've got a lot they're going to have to go through, too, okay? We're going to have to talk about this, got to, for their sake,” Stabler said.

“I just don't understand,” Mary claimed. “Um, with all due respect, newspapers and, you know, whatever, this comes to pass. No matter what in the end, I don't want it, um, I don't want him smeared.”

Stabler agreed with her that the media could be a problem, and griped about the bad image often given to law enforcement on television. “You'd probably feel more comfortable if I was down here beating on a desk yelling and screaming at you. That's what they make us look like on TV. Okay. But that's not—I'm just sitting here talking to you as a parent to parent, you know.”

Stuesher spoke up again. “Are you concerned that the media's going to say a lot of negative things about you or your family or your husband or…”

“Yeah, what's your concerns?” Stabler asked.

Mary stammered about court cases and public records, unable to effectively verbalize her thoughts. “I don't even know the words to say.”

“Just go step to step and tell me what happened,” Stabler urged.

“I just can't right now. Sometimes I think something might have happened, and then, there's no way…”

“Just seems like it's not real, right?”

“Just not right now.”

“Seems like a blur, I'm sure. Has he ever hurt you?”

“Not physically,” Mary insisted.

“Not physically? Okay. What about mentally? Verbally? Any kind of abuse that way?”

“No comment. I just don't know if—Just trying to think this through some more myself. There's no sense in blaming…somebody else, but…”

Stabler pushed, but Mary offered no more. He switched his questions back to the crime scene. Mary denied knowing whether or not her husband was still alive. Then he asked her, “Why'd you shoot him?”

“Um…”

“I mean, like I said, we can't change the past, okay? You agree with me on that?”

“Agree.”

“And we know some facts already. Had you planned ahead of time to shoot him, or did it happen just spur of the moment?”

“Not planned.”

“It wasn't planned? It just happened? Were you scared or something when it happened?”

“I don't even know right now…”

“Were you arguing? What was going on?” he asked, then attempted to get her to define the time frame before pointing to the weapon confiscated from the mini-van. “Is that his shotgun?”

“Um…”

“Did he normally keep it loaded?”

“Um, I don't know…”

“Or did you load it? You don't remember if you loaded it or not, if it was already loaded?”

“I might have messed it up and then put it back. I don't know.”

“Where was it?”

“We keep it in the top of the closet and out of reach.”

Stabler turned the discussion to hunting, and Mary told him Matthew liked to hunt turkey and enjoyed fishing. Then Stabler switched back to the crime scene. “What was going on when you shot him? Was he lying in the bed, sitting in a chair, walking around? Hmmm?”

“I don't remember.”

Stuesher offered her more water, then Stabler asked, “How many times did you shoot? You remember that? More than once?”

Mary and Stabler engaged in a discordant and confusing exchange that finally led to Mary's denial of more than one shot, and her admission that she never shot a gun before. Then, Stabler turned the conversation back to the three
girls. “Mary, they're going through a lot. You're going through a lot. You're gonna have to…”

Stuesher interrupted. “You said he wasn't physically abusing you. We know how people can be abused emotionally and mentally. Was that pretty serious? What was happening?”

Getting unintelligible responses from Mary, they kept applying pressure, urging her to tell the truth about her marriage for her own sake as well as her daughters'. “Tell me why a mother of three, a wife of over nine years, almost ten years, going to college, you look like, you know, a nice well-to-do family, what would make you do this?” Stabler asked. “Why? That's what we've got to answer.”

“Still no comment,” was Mary's only response.

“Well, we know you shot him,” Stabler continued. “You've told us that much. I just need to know why. And this is your opportunity, this is your chance, Mary, to shed some light on all this and to help yourself, okay? Do you want to help yourself? Why, why, why can't you talk to us? Is it me?”

“No.”

“You just don't like me? Just don't want to tell me? Do I need to get someone else in here to talk to you?”

“Unh-uh,” Mary said with a shake of her head.

“The best thing that we could do in a situation like this to stop the media from speculating and doing all the crap that they do is to find out what happened. We could put an end to all that speculation now, and that's up to you,” Stabler said. He hinted at the wild stories the press could make up in the absence of the truth, but, in a seeming contradiction, assured her, “We're not going to make this public, what you tell us, okay? I don't think you're a cold-blooded killer. I wouldn't be sitting this close to you. I'd be scared of you. Something's happened. Something's bad went wrong. Now, I know you're hurting.”

“I really don't mean this selfish[ly], but…” Mary began.

“I know you're not selfish, I know…”

“Driving down the road, I'd think, something would go in my head and I'd thought,
There is no way what had just happened
—And then, I hadn't really seen anything or heard anything. I've used my name everywhere I went, I just thought, you know, I possibly could, you know, whatever. And this just was my last time to be with them, and we were just going to have some fun. I just wanted to be with them before they had bad days, have a happy day.”

“Okay, I think I understand a little bit about what you're telling me now,” Stabler said, encouraging her to continue.

“And, uh, that's why, you know, the storyline was absent. Why there was an absence, but they could be happy and enjoy themselves. And as it's going, I just…”

“So you felt like that because of what you'd done, that you had to take some time to spend with them?”

“Yeah, that was it, yeah. I wasn't going to Mexico or, I just, I had five hundred dollars and…”

“You know that they had a happy day, too.”

“Yeah, yesterday, we found an indoor swimming pool, was the goal of yesterday. And then, when I thought about going to Louisiana—We used to live in Baton Rouge, and I thought,
I know those streets
, and, I don't know, and I thought,
There's nothing to do there
,” Mary said with a sigh.

“Right. Louisiana's pretty messed up.”

“And so I thought,
They've—They don't ever—They've never been to a beach that they remembered
, and uh, so that, that was that.”

“How long were you…?”

“I planned to go home tomorrow.”

“What were you going to do, go back up there and turn yourself in to…?”