My Ugly Came Out - Selmer, Tennessee

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Speaker 1 This week, in Selmer, Tennessee, a new pastor's family moves into town and all seems great until one of them ends up brutally murdered while while police frantically search for the rest of the family before they meet the same fate.

Speaker 1 But the whole thing isn't what it seems to be in the end. Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Speaker 1 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder.

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Speaker 1 Oh, yay, indeed, indeed jimmy yay indeed my name is james petrick allo i'm here with my co-host i am jimmy wistman thank you folks so much for joining us today on another absolutely crazy edition of small town murder this is a wild one as always we cannot wait to get into it before we do though shut up and givememurder.com is the website to go to where you can get all your merchandise and keep an eye out there for tickets to be on sale for 2026.

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Speaker 1 Let's do this, everybody. Okay.
Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it. We're going to Tennessee this week.
Oh, boy. Selmer, Tennessee.
S-E-L-M-E-R, Selmer, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 It's down in southwestern Tennessee. About an hour and 45 minutes to Memphis, if you want to go all the way to the end of Tennessee.

Speaker 1 If you want to go the other way, it's about two and a half hours to Nashville, and it's about seven hours and 40 minutes to our last Tennessee episode. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 That was all the way in the northeastern part of the state. So that's how big Tennessee is.
It's a big,

Speaker 1 big, wide state. It's a long state.
Yeah, it's a big fucker. When you drive through it like on the 40, it's just a hill after hill after hill after hill.

Speaker 1 The last one we did was Mountain City, Tennessee. That's episode 611, the Facebook Catfish Murders, which were

Speaker 1 I remember that episode. That was a lot.

Speaker 1 This is in McNary County, area code 731.

Speaker 1 Little bit of history of the town. Apparently, the rumor is, and what they think is, that it was named after Selma, Alabama.
Oh, wow. Which makes very little sense because Selma is S-E-L-M-A.

Speaker 1 And this is S-E-L-M-E-R.

Speaker 1 They went with hard R.

Speaker 1 I don't understand. Well, there you go.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's part of it. The town was incorporated in 1901.
Now, a couple of things in the history. They're going to be more modern history here.
June 16th, 2007,

Speaker 1 a pro-modified drag racing car driven by

Speaker 1 Troy Warren Critchley lost control while performing a, they were doing like a demonstration thing. Yeah.
He was doing a burnout routine.

Speaker 1 Look at me burning out, going in circles, during a car show charity parade on Mulberry Avenue in downtown Selma. Oh, yeah.
His car left the road

Speaker 1 and struck a bunch of people in the crowd that were attending the parade, which was for the title was America Can Cars for Kids. That's what this was.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize they'd be on the hood of these cars pressed up against the windshield. Jesus Christ.
Sending them into the crowd for them. That's horrible.

Speaker 1 And this part here is definitely not funny. Six young people were killed.
Six. Oh, my God.
Six children were killed. Two died at the scene of the accident and four died later at hospitals.

Speaker 1 That's horrifying. That's horrifying.
Imagine you go to a nice downtown small-town event to raise some money for charity and your kid is killed by a fucking drag racing car. What did he do?

Speaker 1 He was doing burnouts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then just got loose. The circle didn't catch at one point and he shot off into the crowd.
Why would you do that? Oh my God.

Speaker 1 You see those all the time on TikTok now

Speaker 1 on Instagram, whatever.

Speaker 1 These kids...

Speaker 1 Sounds so old. I'll tell you what these kids are doing.
This wasn't a kid doing this.

Speaker 1 No, this isn't a grown-ass adult. But that's what these are.

Speaker 1 These are adult people with their fucking souped up Dodge charger, and they got to do burnouts in a city intersection with dipshits standing all around.

Speaker 1 And they run from the car, and they've got their phones out. This is crazy.

Speaker 1 And every time there's a video of somebody getting blasted with the ass end of this car, and why do you keep doing this? And this was like, you know, completely sanctioned by the town and everything.

Speaker 1 This wasn't like a rogue event. Yeah, this was for charity.

Speaker 1 Lawsuits were filed against the city and the event organizers asking for more than $85,000 or $85 million in damages.

Speaker 1 On March 4th, 2008, the McNary County grand jury returned an indictment against Critchley, the driver, on six counts of vehicular homicide due to recklessness and 22 counts of reckless aggravated assault for all the people.

Speaker 1 Neither Cars for Kids nor the city of Selma were named in the indictment. Critchley pleaded guilty to 28 charges of reckless assault and was sentenced to 18 months probation.
Six kids died.

Speaker 1 He didn't do a day. That's crazy.
In 2025, this year, April 3rd, 2025, an F3 tornado struck the city

Speaker 1 early in the morning, killing five people and injuring 14 others. The city lost an estimated $10 million in property damage as well.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the tornado touched down in downtown and Oak Hill neighborhoods, destroying a lot of homes and buildings. Another quick piece of history here.

Speaker 1 This town, by the way, okay, it had a sh. Sheriff you've heard of probably.
This is where Sheriff Buford Pusser came from, McNary County.

Speaker 1 Yes, they made a movie in the 70s called Walking Tall, starring Joe Don Baker. Then they made a sequel to it called Final Justice.

Speaker 1 And if you're an MST fan, a mystery science theater fan, you will definitely know that one. That's actually Mike Nelson's first episode as the host there when he replaced Joel.

Speaker 1 And there's the famous line, you guys watch Joe Don Baker movies, which is fucking hilarious.

Speaker 1 But yeah, in 1964, in August, his wife Pauline, and he and his wife Pauline were ambushed and she was shot fatally. So

Speaker 1 he basically had scars that he got shot with in his face, and he basically was like trying to hunt people down after that. So it was an interesting thing.
Take it easy, Buford.

Speaker 1 And then he died seven years later. And Jodon Baker immortalized him in a movie.

Speaker 1 So reviews of this town, let's see here. Here's five stars.
Selmer is a small, quiet town filled with so much history and kind residents, famous for our rockabilly, slug burgers.

Speaker 1 I don't even want to know. Oh, boy.
That sounds worse than Scrapple. And famous Buford pusser history.
There's so much to see and visit in our town.

Speaker 1 The only change I wish we had was more places for families to do activities.

Speaker 1 Those activities. Yeah.
Well,

Speaker 1 let's not have a Cars for Kids event.

Speaker 1 That was an activity for families.

Speaker 1 That's not enough activities for a lot of people. Yeah, you guys chill, stay in your houses, why don't you? Well, then you'll get hit by a tornado.
I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 1 Hide, get in the basement. Get the fuck out of there.
I don't know what to tell you. Three stars.
I would like to see high-speed internet. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You'd like to see it.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't that be nice? This isn't a review from 1997 either. This is recent.
The farmer's market is delightful. The school system is okay.
Bethel Springs School is amazing.

Speaker 1 I wish there were more chances for technology advancement.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'd like high-speed. Catch up.

Speaker 1 We'd like to be in the 21st century, please. Thank you.
Yeah. Two stars.
Moved here to get out of Podunk. Moved here to to get out of Podunk.

Speaker 1 They don't even have.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Where did you live before? Where were you?

Speaker 1 In a dugout, like just a dugout cave in the side of a hill. What the hell are you talking about? That worked until the hospital closed.
Moved here to get out of Podunk.

Speaker 1 That worked until the hospital closed. Now this town is worse than the much smaller town I moved here from.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got to

Speaker 1 have a hospital, for Christ's sake. McNary County doesn't have homestead taxes for the elderly to receive free land taxes after a certain age.
That's the sentence. I don't know what it means.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have homestead taxes for the elderly to receive free land taxes after a certain age. Very

Speaker 1 few.

Speaker 1 If you own it, after a while, it stops. Gotcha.
I didn't know if that was if you

Speaker 1 homestead tax is a weird way to put it. Yeah, I don't like that.
No, no, that's a different. That creeps me out.
Well, it's a different thing than just property tax. I don't get whatever.

Speaker 1 Very few job opportunities has a very retirement town feel, but drugs here are a huge all-caps problem in this area.

Speaker 1 Huge problem. Huge problem.
If I hadn't bought a house here and had children, I'd pull up stakes and leave in a heartbeat.

Speaker 1 But I'm going to, since I have kids, I'm going to leave them here in a town where drugs are a huge problem and there's no hospital.

Speaker 1 If you leave, you can take your kids with you.

Speaker 1 He's like, I got to leave them behind, man. It's too rough.
I'm going to keep them here and protect them. Holy shit.
People in this town, 4,421. It's a small town.

Speaker 1 small town, kind of in the middle of nowhere by itself.

Speaker 1 Men and women break down. Women are 50.1% of the population, so just over.

Speaker 1 Median age here, 37, which is just below the national average. It's about 50-50 married, which is normal in the country.
More people are single with children here. It's about 24%.

Speaker 1 The rest of the country, it's about 10%. So

Speaker 1 interesting there. Now, the race in this town, 89.5% white, 3.4% black, 0.0% Asian, 5.8% Hispanic.
Religion in this town, 54.3% religious, so above the national average by a few points here.

Speaker 1 And by far and away, the number one, and really looking at all the numbers, the only religion in the town is Baptist.

Speaker 1 It is 35% Baptist, and it is like 0.0% Episcopalian, Lutheran, Mormon, 0.6% Catholic. It's like two people.

Speaker 1 We just found out how dominant dominant this religion is in the Baptist.

Speaker 1 Every time we've done this show, yeah, the Baptists are, as we know, the Catholics of the South. Yeah.
That's right. Ubiquitous, 0.0% Jewish.

Speaker 1 Unemployment is a little bit above the national average, slightly high. Median household income here is low.
It's less than half the national average. The rest of the country, it's about 69,000.

Speaker 1 Here it is 32,704 household.

Speaker 1 That's rough. Now, cost of living, maybe it's dirt cheap.
Let's find out. Cost of living is 100 in the rest of the country.
That's average and par or whatever. Here, it's 73.

Speaker 1 So that's low. And the housing is the lowest thing by far.
Median home cost here, $131,200.

Speaker 1 Not bad. 1992 prices.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 1992 prices. Well, I mean, if you make 32 grand a year, you can afford $131,000 house.
That's about right. Barely.
I mean, I mean, that's, you know, at least it's not a half a million.

Speaker 1 You know, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 And maybe we'll find some gems here as we look at the Selmer, Tennessee real estate report.

Speaker 1 Average two-bedroom rental here goes for $760 a month, which is well below

Speaker 1 over $1,200 in the rest of the country. House number one is a hovel.

Speaker 1 Not going to lie. There it is.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 All the paint is peeling off the outside. The inside is somehow worse.
Look at this.

Speaker 1 It's rustic. Wild.

Speaker 1 You'd call that rustic. I would call that living in the woods, basically.
This is distressed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's distressed, all right? It's awfully distressed. It's a two-bedroom, one-bath, 1,240-square-foot house on a 0.34-acre lot.

Speaker 1 It's built in 1944, and hey, it doesn't look like it's been touched since. So that's nice.
Hasn't been messed with at all.

Speaker 1 This house is $29,900.

Speaker 1 Very affordable. It's on sale.
Well, it recently had a price cut of $15,000. So

Speaker 1 $40,000.

Speaker 1 They took a third of the house off, basically. It was $45,000.
Now it's $30,000. That is crazy.

Speaker 1 It says charming downtown opportunity awaits.

Speaker 1 The word opportunity is a red flag in a real estate listing. That means shithole.

Speaker 1 And charming is is oftentimes a red flag. That means small.
Yeah. Yeah, and old.
Small and old is charming.

Speaker 1 Opportunity means

Speaker 1 shithole that you need to reach. Harken back to an earlier time,

Speaker 1 centuries ago. Oh, God.
House number two, three-bedroom, two-bath. This is kind of your typical little suburban, nice little

Speaker 1 1,096 square feet. So not a big house.

Speaker 1 Pretty small. It's on one acre

Speaker 1 total there. Built in 2004.
This is $1,069.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, $169,900. This is.

Speaker 1 It's just small. It just had a price cut of $15,000 as well.
Jesus.

Speaker 1 The whole town's on sale.

Speaker 1 Every real estate listing in the country that I look at for this show, everyone has a price cut in the last one. Everything's on sale.
And then finally, here's this one.

Speaker 1 Three-bedroom, four-bath, T-bowl for all your B-hulls here. Each and every B-hole, 4,336 square feet.
Big yard, big fountain out front. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I love the yellow lights at night, like that warm

Speaker 1 warm light color. It's such a great color.
This is on 1.63 acres, built in 1961, $449,000, and just went on the market, so not reduced yet. Things to do here.
All right, let's get into it.

Speaker 1 The Rockabilly Highway Revival Festival. Yeah, yeah.
Here it is. The Rockabilly Highway Revival Festival is an annual event in Selmer, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 It features rockabilly music from old and new artists alike. Yeah, and a hot rod show.

Speaker 1 The music, motorcycles, hot rods, and great food are a perfect way to kick off the summer.

Speaker 1 Dress in your best rockabilly.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, look like a member of the Stray Cats if you possibly can.

Speaker 1 So there's live music.

Speaker 1 A pin-up contest. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's interesting.

Speaker 1 Vendors, all that garbage. A McNary County Music Hall of Fame induction.
Oh, boy. And then

Speaker 1 just people from this county. Buford Busser is in it.

Speaker 1 June 1st is the Miss Rockabilly Highway Revival at some little theater. So you can pick Miss Rockabilly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they have, let's see, Bojack and Lloyd. Bojack and Lloyd is a band playing.

Speaker 1 Bo Jack and Lloyd. Bojack is one guy.
Oh, and Lloyd's a separate guy. Not three guys.
I was trying to

Speaker 1 cruise in at the Wilson Sweet Treats Bakery and Dunn. Okay, that's not a band.
I thought that was a band. I was like,

Speaker 1 that's a wordy fucking band name. M.C.
Carl Perkins will be at the car show. Shit, yeah.
Then they'll have the Hall of Fame induction.

Speaker 1 Then the Rooster Run Trio is going to play at the coveted 11:30 a.m. spot that all the bands are fighting for.

Speaker 1 And then Dale Rushing and the Rust Bucket Roadies will be playing

Speaker 1 at o'clock.

Speaker 1 And then there is the McNary Fried Pie Festival, which

Speaker 1 no description needed.

Speaker 1 There's pies and they're fried. I'm in.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 Then there's the McNary County Harvest Festival, which is

Speaker 1 like a fall thing.

Speaker 1 Come pick out the perfect pumpkin.

Speaker 1 Savor some great food or shop for unique handmade items. Shop for crap that some lady put on a table and buy a pumpkin is what it is.
This town town is 20 years behind the country.

Speaker 1 Homemade earrings and pumpkins is what that is. Yeah, I would say so.
They don't have high-speed internet, for Christ's sake. It seems a little behind.
And they're still doing Rockefeller shit.

Speaker 1 That was 2004. Jesus.
That was 2004, 1981, 1954.

Speaker 1 Every 20 years. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Property crime in this town is high, like almost... 50% above average high.

Speaker 1 Real high. What is going on? 4,400 people? What are they doing in this town? Must be a drug thing.

Speaker 1 And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime is almost double the national average. Wow.
What are you people doing in this? There's 4,400 people.

Speaker 1 Get along. This is a dangerous place to be.
That's why. Now I see why that guy wanted to leave, for God's sake.
But he can't leave his kids.

Speaker 1 Can't leave them behind. I mean, I figured I'd leave him some food out like a cat.

Speaker 1 I can't believe he said that. Someone could put some more food down every three, four days, maybe, and see what goes on.

Speaker 1 That said, let's talk about about a murder. Okay, let's do this.
Let's talk about a man first here. Let's talk about a young man at the time.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about Matthew Brian Winkler, just like Henry, Henry's kid.

Speaker 1 Matthew Brian Winkler, he's born November 21st, 1974. He's born down in Texas,

Speaker 1 but he doesn't grow up in where he's born at all.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 his father is a preacher and goes from place to place place as preachers do. Preachers are like morning radio guys.

Speaker 1 Like one day they're in Tampa and then the next day they're in Baton Rouge and then, oh shit, here I am in St. Paul.
You know what I'm saying? Oh, there we are in Bremington, Washington.

Speaker 1 Slow truckers, for Christ's sake. Slow truckers.
Yeah, well, truckers go home at the end.

Speaker 1 It's like set up a new house and fucking

Speaker 1 enroll their kids in a new school and everything. Imagine if a trucker did that every time he dropped a load off.
All right, kids, into the school. Let's go.
Yeah. Or you live in Vegas this day.

Speaker 1 That's that's it. That's that's kind of what it is.
Uh, his grandfather, Wendell Winkler, was an evangelist, preached for over 50 years all across the southeast. He's a real,

Speaker 1 this is his family, is some real fire and brimstone. Oh, you're going to hell in the world.
And you know, they're this short of whipping a snake out.

Speaker 1 Like, they're that fucking close to getting a rattler out of a, out of a, a bag here. Um,

Speaker 1 so his father, Dan, was the,

Speaker 1 his grandfather was Wendell, his father here, Matthew's father, Dan, was the Church of Christ minister and adjunct professor, and his mother was a teacher as well. So

Speaker 1 it's a family business, basically. He has two older brothers, Dan Jr.

Speaker 1 and Jacob as well.

Speaker 1 The family moved constantly, all the time. They're always on the move.
Dad would go from one church to another church, and Matthew would be in three, four different schools in a year.

Speaker 1 wow i mean just wherever there was work that's where they went um but he all he's which makes him good at transitioning into different places sure i went to a ton of different schools that's where i got humor out how to get comfortable that's it yeah i was like that's how that's where you get humor um and he's an athletic kid he's popular he's handsome at the time so he's he makes friends easy And if you're like a nine-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy, and you go to a new school, if you go outside and you play kickball and you're half decent at it, you have a bunch of new friends now.

Speaker 1 You got friends. They don't care.
You know what I mean? Nobody, everyone. Hey, look at you.
You're a good guy to play with now. Excellent.

Speaker 1 In high school, again, he's a great athlete. He plays multiple sports.

Speaker 1 He graduated from Austin High School in Decatur, Alabama, of course. Oh, boy.
Where you'd expect Austin High School to be.

Speaker 1 This was in 1993. He graduates.

Speaker 1 He, from the start, knows where he's going, and that's into the ministry. All right.
That's what he is doing.

Speaker 1 You know, and the family is, of course, pushing him into it also, but he seems thrilled to go along with it here.

Speaker 1 He ends up going to Freed Hardiman University in Henderson, Tennessee, which is a small 2,000-student Christian college. Nice.
Where's that in Tennessee? It's Henderson, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 Smaller than my high school. I mean,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 yeah. So that's where they go.
And this is is a Church of Christ town, like 90% of the town is Church of Christ.

Speaker 1 Very strict. This is a, they're real strict, these people.
You know, they go to, some of these people go to church every day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And in the school, midnight curfew, strict rules at this school, midnight curfew, you had to go to chapel every day. Oh.

Speaker 1 Every day. And dorms are segregated by gender.
So that's old school. That's like what they used to do, you know.

Speaker 1 The only time the opposite sexes were allowed to visit each other's dorms beyond going to the lobby to go up into the rooms and everything was Halloween.

Speaker 1 Why then? It's so weird. I don't know.
It's strange that this Bible college would be so into Halloween, too. Where it's like, oh,

Speaker 1 we let some rules slide for Halloween. You know, we usually say dress modestly.
Now we're into slutty nurses. Anybody? Who's dressing up as that? It's just a weird.

Speaker 1 Satan and

Speaker 1 witches and devils. Yeah, it's strange.

Speaker 1 Now, Matthew majors in Bible study, and he is going to be a minister. So he is at college at Freed Hardiman University.
He's a handsome guy, six foot one,

Speaker 1 athletic,

Speaker 1 very good looking. The girls like him.

Speaker 1 And he's a charismatic preacher kind of guy. So you can pull people in with your energy like that.
And he does. He meets a young lady who he pulls right into his aura pretty quickly here.

Speaker 1 He meets a young lady named Mary Carol Freeman. And her name's Mary.
Mary.

Speaker 1 It's all biblical, man. Mary Carol Freeman, and that's with an A, Free Man.

Speaker 1 She's born December 30th, 1973, about a year older than him. She had just transferred from David Lipscomb University.
Yeah, where's that? David Lipscomb. Who knows?

Speaker 1 We'll find out. She studies elementary education.
Oh, you study that. Yeah, yeah, you got to get into that for a teaching degree.

Speaker 1 She's born in Knoxville. Her father's name is Clark.
Her mother's name is Mary as well. Wow.
So when she's a kid, she goes by Carol

Speaker 1 to differentiate herself from her mom. And then she'll, that's her middle.
But then later on, she'll go by Mary when she's an adult and goes to college and everything.

Speaker 1 So Mary is her mother. She's a teacher, very devout Christian, very strict.
Her father is a deacon at the Laurel Church of Christ, also. Okay.

Speaker 1 And he's also a real estate guy. So if you could possibly be more full of shit than being a real estate-selling fucking preacher,

Speaker 1 I don't even know how you could possibly.

Speaker 1 You couldn't. It'd be impossible.

Speaker 1 What else could you do? I mean,

Speaker 1 sell crypto. Like, what else is there? I don't know what else.

Speaker 1 Mine crypto. I don't know.
That's what I mean. Or whatever guys are doing and that get in trouble for

Speaker 1 whatever Sam Bankman-Fried was doing. Is that what it is? Yeah, whoever he ruined.
Yeah, I read his book. I read a book about him.
I know what he did, but I don't know what other people are doing.

Speaker 1 So it's a very conservative Christian household, very much, you know, in terms of modesty and, you know, that kind of thing. And,

Speaker 1 you know, parents tell you what to do and you do it. That's it.
It's very old school.

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Speaker 1 Mary has a younger sister that's born very premature and has,

Speaker 1 I have heard, I've seen from many different sources different things that she was born with. So I'm not sure what it is.
I've seen everything from cerebral palsy.

Speaker 1 She developed spinal meningitis after a while,

Speaker 1 had seizures, epilepsy. Wow.
Not in good shape, this kid.

Speaker 1 They tried everything. They went to specialists and experimental therapies and

Speaker 1 prayer groups and everything. And nothing helps the kid, obviously, here.

Speaker 1 Now, she was also a quadriplegic Patricia, her younger sister.

Speaker 1 She had apparently, when Mary's 13 years old, or this is the other thing. We don't know if this happened when Mary was eight or 13.

Speaker 1 We don't know if Patricia was eight or Mary was eight when this happened, but I think it was when Mary was 13 and Patricia was eight.

Speaker 1 If I had to pin it down here.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Mary, Patricia was taking a bath. Mary was helping with the bath.
She stepped away for a minute, and the girl had a seizure in the bathtub. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 And this was horrible.

Speaker 1 She went to get a towel and came back, epileptic seizure, and Patricia, they find her under the water,

Speaker 1 and they try to resuscitate her and everything else, and the poor kid dies. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So imagine how Mary feels now. Can't imagine.

Speaker 1 Indescribably,

Speaker 1 unconsolably guilty. I mean, just absolutely feels awful about herself.
She goes to school, blames herself. She's clearly having some distress in school.
So the teachers, even back then,

Speaker 1 if they see you in the early 70s and send you to the school psychologist, that means something's really wrong. Because back then, nobody gave a shit.
So

Speaker 1 she sent to the school psychologist, they call the parents just to say, hey, you know, we're talking to the kid and, you know, all that. And dad freaks out.
Oh.

Speaker 1 He's,

Speaker 1 you do not tell anybody outside the family this stuff. He said these things are discussed only within the family.

Speaker 1 He was mad at Mary for going to the school psychologist and mad at her for being a human being that is sad that her sister died and she feels guilty for it. So there's no therapy.

Speaker 1 There's no counseling. There's nothing like that.
It's just, it's fine, get over it type of deal. It's tough.

Speaker 1 After that, the Freeman family adopts five children from the same family, two boys and three girls.

Speaker 1 It's apparently a a family that they couldn't keep up with the kids, and it was a dysfunctional deal, and they adopt all of them. And Mary becomes basically their de facto mom.

Speaker 1 She is taking care of these five kids, essentially.

Speaker 1 So, that's tough. Now, Mary in school, she does a lot of extracurricular activities here.

Speaker 1 She's in Spanish clubs, she's in religion society things, she does tennis, she does future teachers of America, she's in the choir,

Speaker 1 she keeps busy, which sounds to me like I don't want to go home and take care of these five kids. I'm going to get involved in every activity I can.

Speaker 1 Yeah, whenever I see a kid with a million things, I'm like, A, oh, you know, just one of those achiever kids, or B, doesn't like being home. Hates it.
Or both.

Speaker 1 Achiever kid who doesn't want to be home, one of the two. There's that too.

Speaker 1 So she graduates in 1992 from South Doyle High School, which was part of Knoxville's school system there.

Speaker 1 She She spent that year, the next year, at Nashville's David Lipscomb University, like we said,

Speaker 1 which is

Speaker 1 a flagship college for churches of Christ believers. So this is a very Christian church.
Christian place, yeah. Kind of, yeah, put up by the churches endorsing it.

Speaker 1 Then the next year, transferred to Freed Hardiman University, which is another Church of Christ affiliate that's in Henderson, Tennessee, which is 20 miles north of Selmer.

Speaker 1 And that's where she meets Matt.

Speaker 1 Now, a friend of hers who knew her at the time said life was good there at the college. She said it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 This woman, Elizabeth Gentle, she transferred to the school in 94, same year as Mary, and they went through orientation together and remained friends throughout the whole year.

Speaker 1 She said that she recalled Mary as a tiny woman. She's small.
She's 5'1 ⁇ .

Speaker 1 She's small.

Speaker 1 Gentle said she was a nice girl. She was quiet.
She was unassuming. She had a pretty smile on her face.
She was easy easy to get along with.

Speaker 1 I sat next to her in Bible class, and she always had a good attitude. She was willing to socialize and she could be funny.
She had just had a sweet spirit about her.

Speaker 1 I can't say anything bad about her. Okay.
So that's Mary in college. Kind of a sweet go-with-the-program kind of kid.
Sure. Which, from her background, that seems about right.

Speaker 1 And she's got a little bit of trauma. Yes.
Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 That'll scar you to have that. Fuck yeah.
I couldn't imagine feeling responsible for killing my sibling, you know? Not Not killing her, not her.

Speaker 1 She didn't kill him, but as a kid, you'd feel responsible for that, you know. And she couldn't, she can't do anything about it.
It's just there now.

Speaker 1 And as a kid, too, you can't process or even, you just can't synthesize in your brain all of these medical things and maybe that's what did it and this triggered that. It's not my fault.

Speaker 1 You just think I'm watching her. I walk away.

Speaker 1 She's dead, my fault, period. Mother's a dead child, right? End of story.
Now, here is, I'm going to read from an Ann Rule book. There's one called Smoke and Mirrors and something else.

Speaker 1 I'll read the whole title later on. But Anne Ruhl

Speaker 1 describes Mary thusly, quote, Mary was both pretty and plain, if such a thing is possible.

Speaker 1 At five feet one, she was a full foot shorter than Matthew, and she weighed 150 pounds, although no one would have guessed that she was that heavy.

Speaker 1 She carried it well with good posture, despite her full bosom. She's got a rack is what they're saying here.

Speaker 1 She stood tall with giant boobs. And when you see pictures of her, that is the best best way to describe her.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's, yeah, she's a little bit, you know, she's not real thin, but she definitely doesn't look heavy or anything like that. She carries it very well.

Speaker 1 She's got kind of a fullish face that's like youthful, you know what I mean? So that's kind of what she looks like.

Speaker 1 So they said she, or Anne Ruhl said, she had dark brown hair cut in a short bob that wasn't particularly flattering to her round face.

Speaker 1 Her high, rounded forehead gave her a resemblance to actress Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci.

Speaker 1 Her skin was lovely. She even had features, and she even had features.
That's an online. And she was very pretty when she smiled.

Speaker 1 She didn't wear much makeup, which was to be expected of this type of kid.

Speaker 1 None of them were all gussied up. You know what I mean? That was...

Speaker 1 Forget about it, man. That's a you're a painted lady, aren't you? You can't do that.

Speaker 1 They said her preference in clothing was for something tailored rather than ruffled. Mary dressed in solid colors and often wore black and white.
So that's Roman rule.

Speaker 1 Now, Mary described at the time talking about meeting Matt and said, we were friends first and our friendship furthered and then we began dating. It was fantastic.
We just clicked. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which I mean, similar interests, similar backgrounds, both their dads and preachers.

Speaker 1 And if sometimes girls look for somebody like their dad, here's a guy who's going to be a preacher.

Speaker 1 There you go. Just like him.
So

Speaker 1 they date for about three months before Matthew proposes. Three months? Three months.

Speaker 1 90 days that he's in? Called a long courting in the Church of Christ community, I think.

Speaker 1 That would be considered well beyond what he needed to do for this group, though. Yeah, you meet a girl, you marry her, period.
That's it. Stay together forever, have kids, and shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 That's kind of how it works. So three months, they're in, which seems like a little...
That seems a little short for that.

Speaker 1 A bit fast for that young. Mary at the campus was a member of the

Speaker 1 Evangelism Forum, and she was active in the Phi Kappa Alpha, which was one of six campus social clubs. So she's very active.
She likes to talk and move and do things.

Speaker 1 This isn't a sorority or a fraternity, by the way. It's just a social club.
No.

Speaker 1 Now, the lady, the Elizabeth Gentlewoman, who...

Speaker 1 talking about Mary in high school, said she also knew Matt and said that he was always wearing an infectious smile. She said, I can't say anything bad about him either.
He loved life, loved people.

Speaker 1 They were just a good Christian couple. Yes, they were.
There you go. April 1996 is their wedding day.

Speaker 1 They get married in Mary's family backyard in Knoxville. Very nice.
Very nice.

Speaker 1 Clark Freeman, her dad, officiates, of course. Mary's 22.
Matt's 21. Oh.
Very advisable.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Then they go back to college.
They go back to Freed Hartiman. Sure.
Now,

Speaker 1 obviously, for a 22-year-old and a 21-year-old, they've never lived with anybody before. They've never lived with each other.
This is all brand new. This is an adventure here.
Now, at some point,

Speaker 1 Mary sees, you know, the other, the real part of Matt.

Speaker 1 What is that? If you've barely known someone, if you dated someone for three months and then you got married, You don't have a full picture of them yet. You've never lived with them.
Right.

Speaker 1 You've never traveled with them. Sure.
You don't know what will happen when a flight gets delayed by two hours.

Speaker 1 Will they punch out the gate agent or will they say, all right, let's go to the Chili's and fucking get something? Like,

Speaker 1 it's important. You know what I mean? Yeah.
So they've never had any of that before. And she's, after a minute, she sees kind of a different person.

Speaker 1 She said at one point, quote, I just remember some point just being shocked at the yelling, at the just, this is a different person.

Speaker 1 That's what she says. She said he had a temper and of a bad temper.

Speaker 1 She says that, her friends too, that Mary's father gave her a desk. It was a desk that belonged to somebody else in the family.
It's kind of a family heirloom.

Speaker 1 And it wouldn't fit in their apartment storage unit. They tried to put it in the unit and they couldn't fit it in there.

Speaker 1 So Matthew got so frustrated, he just destroyed it with his bare hands, just broke it up into it. He just broke it? Just destroyed the fucking thing.
Had a complete freak out.

Speaker 1 Mary said, I remember being so embarrassed, and all I cared about was that nobody was looking outside their apartment at him freaking out,

Speaker 1 taking the Lord's name in vain over a fucking roll, one of those roll-top desks.

Speaker 1 So real weird. Also, the couple's super broke.
Matthew has to drop out of college and take a construction job. Okay.

Speaker 1 He hates it, as everyone does.

Speaker 1 Go to a construction site. Go around and see if it's

Speaker 1 a real happy place to be. It's not.

Speaker 1 See what the attitude is around there not great put it that way everyone's

Speaker 1 it's the most cynical environment that's ever existed is there uh more than a comedy green room even which is saying something yeah so they start to have some kids here um as they go on because you know you're broke you're young Got to have children.

Speaker 1 So they do. Is that what they did? Absolutely.
October 97 with Matthew hating his life, working construction, them having a really hard time making ends meet.

Speaker 1 They, of of course, have a daughter named Patricia at that point. Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 Then they end up moving to Baton Rouge in July of 1998. Matthew accepts his first job at a church.
Nice. So despite not graduating, he has enough charisma to get by on this.

Speaker 1 So the whole family moves to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he became the youth minister at the Goodwood, Goodwood. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Goodwood Boulevard Church of Christ. All right.
So

Speaker 1 if I see the word youth minister, I just picture Kelvin from the righteous gemstones, and that's all I see. That's it.

Speaker 1 I can't unsee this guy being Kelvin now.

Speaker 1 Perfect. Perfect.

Speaker 1 So seven months later, they move on again. Oh, boy.
Like I said, like a morning radio show host here

Speaker 1 to Pegram or Pegram, Tennessee. which is a small 2,000-resident town outside of Nashville.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what it was at the time. I'm sure it's bigger now because Nashville's blown up.
But at the time, it was small. Matthew got a new job as youth minister with the Bellevue Church of Christ.

Speaker 1 So they're settling in. They buy their first house, as a matter of fact.
So good for them. In a neighborhood that's got, you know, smaller houses and a lot of young families in it.

Speaker 1 A lot of, you know, first house buyer time in this area. So they look very happy, Mary and Matthew.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 they're doing from the outside, seem to do fine. Mary said later on, told somebody that Matthew had actually been at his worst at this time.
Oh,

Speaker 1 which I don't know if that's stress or him being more comfortable, or who knows what his, what the deal is. But the congregation loves them, though.

Speaker 1 They are told a church elder said they were a real benefit and a blessing. He was a good daddy, she was a good mommy, and he was an excellent youth minister.
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 So year 2000, Mary is pregnant again.

Speaker 1 Now, during the time she's pregnant, her mom is diagnosed with cancer and dies. Oh, no.
She had like an aggressive colon cancer that was

Speaker 1 done

Speaker 1 before the gestation period of a baby is up. So that's rough.
Her daughter now is born. Mary has another daughter named Mary Alice, who they call Allie.
So that's another Mary.

Speaker 1 April 2002, moving again.

Speaker 1 Again, moving on. Matthew is doing well, so he gets a call and going up to the Central Church of Christ in McMinnville, Tennessee.
So they moved there.

Speaker 1 McMinnville is a little bit bigger than the other town. They're going to like, it's like morning radio.
They're going to bigger markets. Like, hey, I just got a job in Tucson.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Up Modesto is next. Like, I'm getting there, boy.
You have no idea. Moving along.
Moving right along. Eugene, Oregon, I'm this close.

Speaker 1 I swear to God, I'm going to get there one of these days.

Speaker 1 So this is a place that's southeast of Nashville. They buy a house there in September 2002, but aren't able to sell their other home that they bought until May of 2003.
Oh.

Speaker 1 So that's about eight months of nine months of double mortgage.

Speaker 1 That's rough. Double mortgage, double taxes, double insurance, double all that shit.
So,

Speaker 1 yeah, and Ann Ruhl says this, says the Winklers having to carry two mortgages on two houses for eight months on a minister's salary was a financial burden for them, essentially.

Speaker 1 With two small girls and her church duties, it would have been hard for Mary to take a teaching job, even substitute teaching.

Speaker 1 She ends up finding a job at the post office, and that helped a little bit, a part-time post office gig.

Speaker 1 In the fall of 2004, he started teaching, Matthew started teaching Bible classes to boys at the Boyd Christian School in McMinnville for a couple extra bucks.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 they say, Ann Rule says, as far as their neighbors knew, the Winkler marriage was sound.

Speaker 1 Some thought Mary was more friendly than Matthew was, while one man described her as odd, quote, odd, she wasn't too friendly, she didn't mix well, which doesn't sound like Mary at all.

Speaker 1 She's involved in every social activity possible. So

Speaker 1 that's odd. They said also sometimes Mary and Matthew engaged in

Speaker 1 little PDAs.

Speaker 1 You know, they were hugging each other and even a little kiss during a church party or church meeting or something, a little, which is considered, ooh, look at them. Get a room, you two.

Speaker 1 You peck your wife on the cheek. They're like, oh, Jesus, my kids are here.
What the fuck, man? Zip it up. Come on, take a zip.

Speaker 1 So in McMinnville here,

Speaker 1 he's teaching all of this. The principal at the boys' school, the Boyd Christian School that he's teaching at, said, quote, Matt had it all.
He was handsome. He was full of personality.
He was smart.

Speaker 1 But most importantly, he had a good Christian soul. Sure did.
I don't know what handsome would matter teaching kids the Bible. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's easier to follow him if he looks better than

Speaker 1 whatever he does. It's wild.
So

Speaker 1 he's a fifth-generation minister, by the way. Yeah.
His great-grandfather was even a minister. Oh,

Speaker 1 he is going at it.

Speaker 1 So at this point, Mary's, you know, unassuming, quiet, small, 5'1, long brunette hair.

Speaker 1 Everybody says she's always looking at the floor. What does that mean? It's just shy.
Shy, which is they like that, though, in the church. They say that that's supportive, submissive, silent.

Speaker 1 That's what they want from her wives, basically. Sure, it's fucking submissive.
Yeah, you got to be behind him because he's the, you know, that's just how the church goes there.

Speaker 1 So in this particular church anyway, I don't want to cast a large aspersion.

Speaker 1 Now they have cute little daughters. They got everything.
They live in a nice brick house in a shady yard. Very nice.
They have a pet dog named Firefly.

Speaker 1 Great. People said, here's some quotes about them.
They were the ideal family next door. They seemed to live and breathe the Bible.

Speaker 1 One neighbor described them as, quote, perfect.

Speaker 1 So you know there's trouble. You just know it.
It's a nightmare.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you just know it. So

Speaker 1 some of the younger members of the congregation had like crushes on him, too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, that happens a lot with religious leaders just because it's kind of like why people fall in love with their fucking therapist or something. It's the trusting relationship that you have.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've just built so much here. Yeah, exactly.
The young church members have a nickname for him. They call him Wink.

Speaker 1 What does that mean? Winkler. That's his last name.

Speaker 1 Hey, Wink. Which, goddamn it.
Oh, boy. That's bad.
They said,

Speaker 1 not because he was a flirt or he wasn't winking at people. His name was Winkler.
So

Speaker 1 everybody, there was no talk of

Speaker 1 him not being faithful to his wife or her not being faithful to him or any of that. They were just the perfect couple.
Maybe not so perfect, though.

Speaker 1 Here are some people who saw some things that they didn't really like about this whole situation.

Speaker 1 Here's a friend of Mary's who said later he once saw her with a black eye when Matt was the youth minister at the Central Church of Christ in McMinnville.

Speaker 1 She had told this friend at the time that she was messing around with her two daughters, the two older daughters here, and one of them elbowed her in the eye.

Speaker 1 And so that was what they said.

Speaker 1 So he said, he said, I don't know, I saw her with a black eye. She explained it away.

Speaker 1 Which could very easily happen. If you've had little kids, they are wild.
Oh, God. Yeah.

Speaker 1 My daughter split my fucking fucking lip one time. It looked like somebody beat the shit out of me, but she had a toy and just turned quick and smashed me in the face with it.

Speaker 1 Absolutely just fucked my shit up when she was like two years old, bleeding all over the place. So, I mean, that's a fair thing.

Speaker 1 You know, just because someone has a black eye doesn't mean that their husband punched them. Right.
And they throw things. They can easily catch a fucking

Speaker 1 Hot Wheels in the face. If she said, I slipped and fell into a doorknob, then you go, okay, come on, Mary, what's going on? Are you okay? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But I was playing with my kids and one of them threw an elbow at me, seems reasonable.

Speaker 1 So easy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Also, another woman here, who's a woman named Lori Boyd, who is a former Church of Christ

Speaker 1 secretary, said that it seemed to her that Matthew decided how much Mary ate and what she wore. Oh, I don't like that at all.
Which is the two most basic pieces of autonomy.

Speaker 1 What you wear and what you're putting into your body. Like, don't tell me how much to eat and what to wear.

Speaker 1 Imagine you've had girlfriends all the time.

Speaker 1 I don't tell anybody anything. I'll go in the house and tell Sarah, stop eating and put this on.
She'll fucking stab me in the face with a fork. I can't do that.
And it'd be, I understand it.

Speaker 1 Stop eating that. Have some lettuce.
Put this on.

Speaker 1 Stop eating that and put this on. Is it going to go over big, I don't think? And I wouldn't want her to.
Wear whatever you want. I don't care.
It's fucking weird.

Speaker 1 So another guy here, her doctor, Mary's doctor,

Speaker 1 when she lived in McMinnville, he treated her for bruises to her right eye and right cheek. This is the same time the other guy saw the bruises, and she told him that she was hit by a softball.

Speaker 1 So, two different stories about that, which is interesting there. I don't like that at all.
No.

Speaker 1 That's not good. Now, Mary's family at this point, here's another piece of the puzzle.
Sure. She becomes pretty much estranged from her father at this point.
Her mother's dead.

Speaker 1 Yeah, loses contact for the most part with her adopted siblings. She'll end up having some contact with them, but not as much as they would like, which isn't good.

Speaker 1 If you're separating someone from their family, that's weird.

Speaker 1 That is the biggest relationship red flag that a lady can fucking see is if the guy's trying to keep you away from friends and family. That's not good.

Speaker 1 Now, also, at the same time, sometimes people get to be in their late 20s and they start to realize, hey, my parents were pieces of shit and I don't want to talk to them anymore. That also happens.

Speaker 1 That also happens. But

Speaker 1 the adopted siblings, that doesn't make a lot of sense here. Mary, this is from Ann Rule's book.

Speaker 1 Mary's sister Tabitha would recall a conversation with Matthew where he called the Freeman family together, you know, all of Mary's family, and explained that they would have to accept that Mary would not be a part of their family the way she had been before.

Speaker 1 Why? It's a real good question. Well, he, he said, he and their marriage, him, the kids, and their marriage marriage had to come first,

Speaker 1 which, obviously, your family, your nuclear unit comes first, but then you still have time to call your dad on a Sunday and say hello or, you know, to go over for a, have lunch with him on a Tuesday or something.

Speaker 1 Like, you could do that.

Speaker 1 You don't have to be exclusively one people. No.
Tabitha was stunned. She didn't see why being a wife would preclude Mary from being her sister, which obviously that seems crazy to say that.

Speaker 1 To say that that would be, yeah, I'm a wife now. I can't possibly, I can't be your sister.
I mean, oh, God, you know.

Speaker 1 So she's just her and Matthew and the kids now.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, there's that, though. Now, January 2005 is when they move to Selmer, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Matthew in January 2005 takes a job as a pulpit preacher at the 4th Street Church of Christ in Selmer. Right.
Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 Now, this is, and they move in and everybody says, oh, look at the perfect family, the perfect marriage, the perfect preacher with the perfect wife, with perfect kids. We love them.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 This is exactly what they were like.

Speaker 1 The clouds have opened up and a ray from heaven brought them down.

Speaker 1 Adorable little girls and a

Speaker 1 nice wife with her head down and him with his charisma and all that bullshit. So,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 there are a lot of churches in Selmer, by the way. Really? There's over 100 churches in Selmer with with 4,400 churches.
Over 100. Over 100.
It's a lot. They really like their church down there.
So

Speaker 1 now, about the Church of Christ, this is

Speaker 1 just from what I'm reading, looking it up, their general thing is this is your literal Bible reading.

Speaker 1 The earth is 6,000 years old. Yep.

Speaker 1 You know, all that shit. This is a documentary in book form.
Yes, and it's all literal. Yeah.
None of it's an allegory. None of it, it's everything that's said is a literal thing that happened.

Speaker 1 It's not a, you know, it's not a metaphor. It's not any of that stuff.
Which I think

Speaker 1 I'm not a religious guy, but I would think that would take the

Speaker 1 brilliance of the writing out of it.

Speaker 1 If it was just, if you took it literally, you'd go, okay, these people were just, they were just jotting down notes as they watched it rather than the actual, there's kind of a brilliance in some of the

Speaker 1 metaphorical things that go on and shit like that, I think is what they're.

Speaker 1 how it could relate to so many people at once how it can relate to different things yeah and i'm like i said i'm not a religious guy i'm not a biblical guy but i always thought that was kind of the point of it so right i don't know but

Speaker 1 we live like this because we all have the a shared experience the literal reading is you got to be out of your mind to believe any of that like i'm sorry i know we're gonna have people are gonna be mad at us for that yeah you you think the earth is 6 000 years old you're a fucking moron i'm sorry it's not it's clearly not there's like there's a lot of

Speaker 1 every kid in third grade with a book about dinosaurs can tell you that. It's not the truth.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 It's just not. So that's one thing, not to get off on that shit.
But in this, though,

Speaker 1 it's old-fashioned. It's very old-fashioned.

Speaker 1 One article called it, Full Immersion Adult Baptism.

Speaker 1 Forbids the use of musical instruments during services. None of us? None of this song and dance.
None of these rock concerts that we have today? Fire and brimstone. None of this shit.

Speaker 1 No, none of that.

Speaker 1 So it's not a denomination, the Church of Christ, apparently. They regard themselves as a network of like-minded, autonomous congregations, each governed by its own slate of elders.

Speaker 1 They're not related to the United Church of Christ, which is a mainline Protestant denomination, not affiliated with that.

Speaker 1 So the elders are assisted by deacons who have responsibilities such as keeping the church grounds good and the pews all fucking in working order.

Speaker 1 The religious leader leader at the Churches of Christ affiliate typically is called an evangelist or a pulpit preacher. And that's what Matthew is, their pulpit preacher.

Speaker 1 So they look perfect. There's some neighbors that hear some different shit, though.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Well, there's a neighbor here that says, quote, we heard them arguing sometimes late at night, but you never think, I mean, they were the preacher's family.

Speaker 1 You just assume everything's fine behind those walls.

Speaker 1 Do you? Why?

Speaker 1 No matter what you do for a living, that means nothing about what your private life is like. Nothing.
And usually I think the opposite of whatever you're doing.

Speaker 1 If you're like signaling too much, I think you're doing worse shit. What are you doing behind closed doors? I don't like that shit.

Speaker 1 So Dan and Sharon Everett lived across the street from them, from Matt and Mary. They had foster children.
They had six foster children and a dog also. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a busy household, which was a Rottweiler.

Speaker 1 They had a Rottweiler.

Speaker 1 I would say. So one day, the Rottweiler strayed into Matt and Mary's lawn.

Speaker 1 Your neighbor's dog comes in your lawn. What do you do? You go, hey, buddy, come here.
Where are you going? And then you take them back to their house, right? Yeah, get him back home. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Matthew got pissed. Oh.
He crossed the street and confronted one of the foster kids, started yelling at one of the kids.

Speaker 1 What is this?

Speaker 1 Then started yelling at the wife, Sharon. Oh.
And said, quote, if you don't keep that dog away from my house, I'll kill it.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 kill the dog. He's going to murder a neighbor's dog for no reason, which is absolutely crazy.
And there's a police report behind this as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's crazy. So that's a lot.

Speaker 1 Sharon, I guess, said she tried to apologize and said the dog got out accidentally. It wasn't on purpose.

Speaker 1 And also, the dog's really friendly. She's not going to hurt anybody.
So, you know, it's fine. It's okay.
Kind of push her back in our direction and it's okay.

Speaker 1 Matthew said, fuck that and said, I'll kill that fucking dog if it comes in my yard again. Wow.

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Speaker 1 So Dan, the husband, he went over to try to smooth things over,

Speaker 1 which is a different way than things would go down in my neighborhood if you did that. You'd go, oh, what are you fucking? You threaten my fucking wife and kids.
I'll kill you.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'll fucking kill you. There'd be people murdering each other.
So Dan goes over to try to smooth things out. And,

Speaker 1 wow.

Speaker 1 Matthew said, quote, I wouldn't do that if I were you. There's a law against firing guns in city limits.
That's what he told him.

Speaker 1 And then he he said, and if I ever see that dog again, I'll shoot him. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 after that, the Everetts never spoke to Matthew again. Really? Sharon would wave when his car drove by.
He never waved back. That was over.

Speaker 1 But they said Mary was as friendly as she could be, and she always returned the wave. So this had nothing to do with her, basically.

Speaker 1 Sharon said it this way, the neighbor, quote, look, if he was that way out here in public, you can imagine what he had to be like in private.

Speaker 1 They just knew him with his suit on, meaning all the people in town just knew him, his public image, which was...

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Also, there was neighbors that said they saw black eyes on Mary, heavy makeup around black eyes and things like that.

Speaker 1 And they all said that Mary would always cower when Matthew was around, which was kind of

Speaker 1 how that, you know, that's kind of for show too. But I'm not sure if that was real also.
We don't know.

Speaker 1 March 2005, they have another baby named Brianna, who was born prematurely.

Speaker 1 Shit.

Speaker 1 So the baby has to be held at this Nashville hospital, which is 150 miles away.

Speaker 1 As we talked about,

Speaker 1 it's a decent drive.

Speaker 1 So they have to go back and forth, basically, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So this is very expensive, and they're piss poor broke at this point.

Speaker 1 Mary is the person. She does the bookkeeping and the bill paying and things of that nature.
So she ends up falling for a scam.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Apparently in Africa, they call it the 419 scheme.

Speaker 1 419. Because that's the law in Nigeria that bans it.

Speaker 1 Law 419.

Speaker 1 The scammers,

Speaker 1 basically, this is the Yahoo, Yahoo Boys. You ever heard of that shit? No.
It's a huge group because they have Yahoo accounts and tons of them. So that's where they got the nickname.

Speaker 1 Basically, this is the old, you've won a million dollars. You just need to send us your for processing fees bullshit.
Oh, boy. They're like Nigerian prince shit.

Speaker 1 Hey, I have $50 million, but it's being held in escrow, and I need a five grand to get by, and I'll give you a million dollars if you give me five grand. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Mary gets checks in the mail from these people. Oh.
One's from Canada, one's from Nigeria, for a total of $17,500.

Speaker 1 She deposits them and withdraws $500 cash, but the checks are fake. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Obviously. So the bank calls her and says, hey, you just withdrew money from shit that doesn't exist.
Bad checks. Yeah.
So Mary, we need that money back. Mary says, oh, shit.

Speaker 1 So she starts writing checks from one account to cover checks on another account.

Speaker 1 Just basically trying to move money to make it work when there's not enough there. To cover money that...

Speaker 1 So she knows already this check bounced. Yeah.
So she's like, oh, fuck, I got scammed. This isn't good.
She knows she's been scammed. Oh, totally.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Once they tell her the check is fake and she's fucked she knows what happened and she's like oh no so she starts opening new accounts um she's moved accounts that aren't even in town she's opening new banks over five hundred dollars

Speaker 1 more because it gets worse because as she starts writing more money for checks that they don't have the money the total gets bigger and bigger and bigger that she's a check bounced and she went and got another one

Speaker 1 no she took 500 out that they didn't have right so then she had to cover other stuff so she was writing checks from other accounts that have don't have the money to cover ones that she does.

Speaker 1 So it gets snowballs.

Speaker 1 It snowballs from there. It's not good.
Then there's all the fees of bounce checks and all that stuff. Everything adds up.

Speaker 1 She changes her, gets new accounts in her name only to try to hide this from Matthew, apparently.

Speaker 1 Changes her mailing address to a P.O. box.

Speaker 1 This started over $500.

Speaker 1 Started over $500 and got worse. And we'll talk about where they are in a minute when we get there in a sec.
So she tried to remove Matthew's name from their bank account also at one point.

Speaker 1 So March 20th, 2006, church secretary Betty Wilkerson sees Mary and Matt having lunch together on March 20th. Okay.

Speaker 1 She said they were having lunch in his office, talking and laughing together. They were the ideal family next door, the perfect family.
I gave them chocolate chip muffins to eat for dessert. Really?

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. That's nice.
So, March 21st, the family account at Regions Bank is overdrawn by $5,000. This is what it snowballed to.

Speaker 1 She's all fucked up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 she is trying to fix this. This is the same day, March 21st, that she has her first day of work as a substitute teacher at Selmer Elementary School, which substitute teaching.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of shifts to cover five grand and substitute teaching. Oh, my God.
That's like both semesters.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now, there's people who say that Matthew knew about this and knew what happened and was just as involved in getting scammed.

Speaker 1 And then there's a lot of other people that say Matthew had no idea and Mary was trying to fix this on her own without having the embarrassment of telling him that she got scammed, basically.

Speaker 1 It is embarrassing. Nobody wants to feel like that.
No, that's why people don't tell people when they get scammed. And then more people get scammed because they're embarrassed.
Right, right.

Speaker 1 Because it's fucking, you feel like an idiot. Yeah.
I've heard.

Speaker 1 I've read in books about like an NFL locker room. Some guy will come in with some financial shit and he'll scam 10 different guys because none of the guys will tell anybody they got scammed.

Speaker 1 So then other guys will go invest money in this guy because they're all embarrassed.

Speaker 1 If I get scammed,

Speaker 1 I can't wait to tell fucking everyone. Oh, I'm so mad.
I'm so mad. I'm angry.
I can't believe I did this.

Speaker 1 Out of your fucking mind.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this first day of school, her coworkers notice that she is on the phone all day. Yeah.
It's her cell phone.

Speaker 1 It's two different banks are calling her, the Regions Bank in Selmer and the First State Bank in Henderson.

Speaker 1 They want one of the banks wants Matthew and Mary to come in to meet with them the next day, March 22nd, to explain what the fuck's going on and how we're going to get our money back and why we shouldn't call the cops on you, essentially.

Speaker 1 So Mary goes home after work. That evening, the family orders Pizza Hut and watches the movie Chicken Little.
Nice choice. There you go.

Speaker 1 Except for the Pizza Hut.

Speaker 1 But in this area, I think that's probably the best pizza you're going to get.

Speaker 1 So the girls go to bed at 8:30. Apparently, Matthew and Mary argue about money and overdrawn accounts and all that kind of thing, and then go to bed angry.
Okay. That's all we know.

Speaker 1 Now, this is from a book called The Pastor's Wife by Diane Fanning.

Speaker 1 She says, church elder

Speaker 1 Roger Graham's memory of the night here said, quote, Matthew called me around 10 o'clock that Tuesday night.

Speaker 1 He sounded agitated. He said, Mary and I had a little disagreement tonight, but everything's fine now.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Now, Mary doesn't sleep very well. No.

Speaker 1 6.15 a.m.

Speaker 1 is wake-up time. That's when the alarm always goes off.
Wow. Okay.
That's what we know of what happened that night.

Speaker 1 The next day, March 22nd, at 2006, the Wednesday at 9.22 p.m. Remember, that's the day they're supposed to go to the bank at noon.
They never went to the bank. No? No.

Speaker 1 And that Wednesday night, it's Wednesday church service. It's a big service Wednesday.

Speaker 1 Matt doesn't show up to do a shift of preaching. So they sit there and wait for him and wait for him.
And, you know, this is like a comic not showing up for the show.

Speaker 1 There's no fucking show now. Yeah.
I already bought my two drinks and I got no jokes now. What's going on?

Speaker 1 So they said, Matthew never missed a service, especially if he's leading the service, which he was supposed to lead this one. So a bunch of the church people pile in a car and drive to the house.

Speaker 1 Really? Wow. That is

Speaker 1 call in over here. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 They knock on the door. Nobody answers.
Windows are closed. Doors are locked.
Lights on are on inside. And they hear the TV playing loudly as well.
Okay. They're like, okay, somebody's got to be home.

Speaker 1 So they keep knocking. They're calling the phone, the house phone.
No one's answering. They hear it ringing in there.
No one's answering it. They keep knocking, nobody responses.

Speaker 1 So they call one of the church elders and they go, hey, we're over here. He's not answering the door.
And so they said, what should we do? The church elder said,

Speaker 1 I know where the spare key is. Find it and go inside.

Speaker 1 He knows how to get into their house? Yeah, they all have to tell each other where the spare key is. Who knows if that church elder watered their plants when they went to

Speaker 1 when they went to have the daughter and all that kind of shit. Who knows? But anyway, they say, go inside his house.

Speaker 1 Even though it seems like he's in there and purposely not answering the door, you should break in

Speaker 1 with a key.

Speaker 1 So they get the key. They figure that all out.
And about a half hour later, they get in. Okay.
Now, inside the house, they're calling for Matthew, Mary.

Speaker 1 You know, they're calling the girls' names, calling everybody. No one answers.
They hear the TV playing, but that's it.

Speaker 1 Everything's in place. There's not like a China cabinet knocked over, chairs broken, like there was a fucking old West saloon fight in there or something.

Speaker 1 It's fine. So they reach the master bedroom.
The door is closed.

Speaker 1 They open

Speaker 1 someone's master bedroom door to their formerly locked house.

Speaker 1 It's pushed right on in.

Speaker 1 Right on in here.

Speaker 1 Fucking in there. That's what I mean.

Speaker 1 Him and Mary could be absolutely, I mean, they could have dropped the kids off with their parents, and he could be just fucking her face like nobody's business right now while she's

Speaker 1 throwing

Speaker 1 a vibrator. Yeah.
They could have fucking

Speaker 1 SNM shit hanging from the ceiling. It could

Speaker 1 be wild. They may have forgotten it was pulpit night.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit, really? Matthew's like suspended from the ceiling by chains. It's Tuesday.
God damn it, Mary. I said it was Wednesday.
I knew it. So they open the door and they find Matthew.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Not in a good state. No.
He is face down on the floor in a big pool of blood. Oh, no.
Blood patter on the walls, bloody foam dried on his face. Not looking good.
Matthew's seen better days.

Speaker 1 Big, giant hole in his back.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. And very, very dead.
Extremely dead. And also, they automatically go for the phone and find it to be unplugged from the wall jack.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 1 So they all go into the living room and pray for a minute.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Later. That's later.

Speaker 1 We got a body.

Speaker 1 We got to round up the troops here. That's later.
So they go into there and pray,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 they call the cops, obviously.

Speaker 1 Now, everybody out there is going, oh, my God, we went through the house. We saw Matthew, but who did we not see? Mary and the children.
Where is she? Where are they?

Speaker 1 So they assume this is a home invasion where the kids and wife have been now taken. So they're terrified.
Everybody is. I will read from the end rule book here.

Speaker 1 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, which is their land plot here. Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't know why they love calling it a parsonage in Tennessee. He saw that Matthew Winkler had apparently died where he lay.

Speaker 1 He wore a red undershirt, a green long-sleeved shirt, and what could be called either pajama or lounging pants. House gear.

Speaker 1 You know, yeah. The minister's arms were flung out with his right hand touching the bathroom door and the left extending under the bed.

Speaker 1 His right leg was straight and his left leg was bent at the knee so that it looked so that his ankles were crossed.

Speaker 1 So everybody get the picture there. At first glance, there wasn't much blood apparent, save for the froth from his mouth, which indicated some sort of injury to his lungs, obviously

Speaker 1 breathing out blood.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So, not like in the middle of your back, but down low. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 The bedding and carpet beneath were soaked with mostly dried blood, so that helps to find out when this happened. The blood is drying, things like that.

Speaker 1 They said whatever internal wounds Winkler had, his immediate cause of death would probably have been exanguation, which is bleeding out. He had bled to death.

Speaker 1 So they said the beginning of rigor mortis and the temperature of Matthew Winkler's body indicated that he'd probably been dead for more than 12 hours.

Speaker 1 So they said at this point, they don't know where Mary and the girls are, and it's been at least 12 hours. They could be taken anywhere.
Anywhere. 12-hour head start for 10 years.

Speaker 1 12-hour head start is insane. That's huge.
I mean, they could be on a flight to

Speaker 1 six states away. Absolutely.
Well, man, Tennessee, maybe not, too, because it's eight hours across the state. Right, right.
Yeah, no, I was just making Tennessee's big joke.

Speaker 1 So where the fuck are Mary and the girls? They said they weren't anywhere in the house and the family's Toyota Sienna minivan. Ooh, that's the worst.

Speaker 1 We've had long, we had long Toyota Sienna conversations one time.

Speaker 1 We were in some city and the only Ubers, they were all Toyota Sienas. And we're like, what's going on? Madison.
What was it? Madison, Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 You will get a 65-year-old lady driving you in a Toyota Sienna if you take three Uber rides, guaranteed. And they'll be nice as shit, friendly.
It'll be beautiful. Real nice.

Speaker 1 So the minivan's missing from the driveway.

Speaker 1 So they're wondering, did Matthew die trying to protect his family? Yeah. Someone came in and he said, you know, you're not doing this or whatever.
And then they shot him and just took everybody.

Speaker 1 They said, we're marrying the girls now hostages of some psychopath or what the fuck here?

Speaker 1 So they said, if Matthew had been killed, this is for Man Rules book, had been killed in a a home invasion robbery, something should be missing. So that's what we're looking for.

Speaker 1 So the detectives see on his dresser is a money clip with cash in it and a decent wad of cash,

Speaker 1 which is strange. So they're like, his driver's license is there too.
So they're like, that's right on the dresser. If you're stealing...

Speaker 1 There's a bundle of cash right there. You're stealing shit.
You grab that right off the bat on the way out the door. Like, you don't even have to go in his pocket for it.

Speaker 1 They said a check of the other rooms in the house were a tiny bit reassuring as well. There was no signs of blood or struggle anyplace but in the master bedroom.

Speaker 1 They said still Winkler's family was gone and Mary hadn't called to summon help for her husband and no one had heard from her. So this didn't look good.

Speaker 1 This looked like we're looking for four more corpses at some point here and three of them are tiny.

Speaker 1 So the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents Chris Carpenter and Mike Frizzell arrived near midnight.

Speaker 1 From the appearance of the single wound in Matthew Winkler's back, all the detectives felt that the death weapon had been a shotgun fired from a good distance, a decent distance away.

Speaker 1 Not right on top of him.

Speaker 1 There was no gun, though, in the house or the yard. They searched the whole property, found no gun.

Speaker 1 So they're like, okay, which that means the murderer either came with a gun or took whatever,

Speaker 1 wherever the murder weapon came from, they took it with them, obviously. So, along with the family.
So, they issue an amber alert at this point. Because we got two kids.
Three kids.

Speaker 1 Three kids, right? Including a baby. Right.
This is terrifying. There are three small, four girls, or four, a woman and three girls, four female human beings are missing.

Speaker 1 And one of them is very, very tiny and a baby. So Amber Alert is issued here for Patricia, eight, Mary Alice, six, and one-year-old Brianna and 32-year-old Mary.

Speaker 1 Family minivan, 2006 gray Toyota Sienna, also put out there on the wire for everybody. And the police assumption is they've been murdered already, probably.
Yeah, they're probably dead.

Speaker 1 They're probably dead and in some woods somewhere

Speaker 1 in Trump. Or

Speaker 1 the van's been set on fire in some reservoir or something. So the whole town is freaking out.
And this is a crazy case. Dead pastor with his

Speaker 1 wife and three little girls kidnapped. Like the media goes bonkers.

Speaker 1 People from everywhere come to Selmer I mean this is not a town where anybody from outside of it's ever goes to you know what I mean so this is this is crazy it's like a movie all these people just descending on this town so the autopsy on Matthew begins on March 24th here and they said rigor mortise had begun to stiffen his body but was not yet complete

Speaker 1 The red and purple markings on the portion of the body that had been the lowest, where the blood had pooled and where his heart heart had stopped before, lividity, as we call it, were fixed and complete on his back and buttocks with blanching along the parts that had touched the floor of the Winkler's bedroom.

Speaker 1 There would be a few surprises in this autopsy.

Speaker 1 Matthew Winkler had only one real wound, along with some scratches on the front of his right knee and lower leg, which perhaps he made as he crawled on the floor in an attempt to escape.

Speaker 1 after he was shot. He said he might have

Speaker 1 a couple of crawls and then he collapsed.

Speaker 1 He'd been shot in the back by a weapon far enough away that there was no soot around the wound. So definitely not a contact wound.

Speaker 1 So they said in this autopsy, quote, in the middle of the back is a three-quarter inch in diameter shotgun wound of entrance with slight irregular margins and an irregular 1 16th to 1 8th circumference marginal abrasion.

Speaker 1 The defect is located 21 and a half inches below the top of the head and at the posterior midline. Five evenly spaced half-inch by half-inch rectangular abrasions surround the defect.

Speaker 1 As dictated by Dr. Turner, the defect left by the shotgun shell sounded clinical and had no emotion, but the fatal wound was horrific, of course, as all shotgun wounds are.

Speaker 1 Pellets of bird shot and wadding from the contents of the shotgun shell had blasted into his back. Apparently, it was 77 birdshot pellets they took out of him.
Wow. That's a lot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So they said after it perforated his skin, fatty tissue, and the muscles in his back, the birdshot cut through four ribs in the middle of his back and tore through the lower lobe of his left lung, his diaphragm, stomach, spleen, pancreas, and left adrenal gland.

Speaker 1 Tore him apart inside.

Speaker 1 There were contusions in the upper lobe of his left lung and the lower lobe of his right lung, and two of the vertebrae in his spinal column were broken. Okay.
So this is just a mess.

Speaker 1 His trachea and lungs were awash in aspirated blood, and his stomach held a hundred milliliters of blood. White foam from his ruined lungs had bubbled from his nose and mouth.
They said carefully, Dr.

Speaker 1 Turner collected scores of pellets of the bird shot and plastic wadding from the internal organs. Whoever held the shotgun had stood above Matthew.

Speaker 1 The trajectory of the bird shot could be traced from his back to the front of his body.

Speaker 1 Okay, from right to left and slightly downward.

Speaker 1 So, this is not someone shorter than him that shot him while he was standing up. Backwards shot, too.

Speaker 1 Because it's either he's laying down or somebody taller, or however it works. So, because it's a downward, right? Okay, now, um,

Speaker 1 they're still frantically searching for Mary and the girls at this point. Then, on March 23rd, 2006, in Orange Beach, Alabama,

Speaker 1 okay, an unlikely spot for the story to go. Officer Jason Whitlock, not the sports reporter guy, not that guy.
Douchebag. Not that guy.

Speaker 1 Spots a gray minivan matching the Amber Alert description at one point.

Speaker 1 Now he spots it and he sees it make an illegal U-turn on Perdido Beach Boulevard. Great.
So he pulls it over with standard procedure used for radio to check for wants and warrants.

Speaker 1 As you do, you run the plate. So the report came back and told him what was going on, basically.
So he said, holy shit, this is a big one. I stopped with an alert, an amber alert.

Speaker 1 So he immediately called for backup and three units arrived to surround the vehicle in a Walmart parking lot.

Speaker 1 Now, they said Whitlock had no idea what he might find, so he used great caution as he walked toward the driver's side window. They said that.

Speaker 1 If Mary and her children were still alive and uninjured, he didn't want to do anything that would spook whoever took them and have them have this guy starting to be that that way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, start shooting them in the car or something. You know what I mean? So they're like, fuck that.
He said he didn't want to do anything that might place them in more danger.

Speaker 1 They said a kidnapper would probably try to hold them as shields to keep from being arrested. So they're aware of all this.
He might have a baby as a human shield here.

Speaker 1 So he said, but when Wentlock walked to the window, I mean, he is like,

Speaker 1 you can imagine, heartbeating. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Holy shit, walking past the tents of the back. Oh, damn.
It walks in, looks in the window. He said he was shocked.
Shocked. How bad is it? Just sees Mary at the wheel with three kids in there.

Speaker 1 Everybody's fine. No one else in the car.
Just the four of them. Good news, guys.
We've been looking for you. Everybody looks healthy and happy and clean.
And

Speaker 1 okay, that's odd. Unhurt.
They're like, okay, that's good. Everyone's healthy, but what the hell's going on? So they draw guns, man, get out of the vehicle.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, show your hands, all that kind of thing. Mary steps out.
She's wearing a pink jumpsuit, very calm. Yeah.
No anything.

Speaker 1 She didn't even ask what's going on. Nothing.
Everything's pink. Everything's fine.
Everything's good.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 really weird. They said she got out.
This is from the cop. She got out and she never asked why she was stopped, why there were officers pointing guns at her or anything.
She really made

Speaker 1 guns, too. Yeah, they surrounded the car.
They had guns out and everything. She really made no expression on her face and she was detained.
They said the girls were totally fine.

Speaker 1 They were having a good day.

Speaker 1 Patricia kept asking, where's mommy? What's happening? Where's mommy going? What's going on? So Mary told the girls,

Speaker 1 as this is happening, daddy's in the hospital. We're going to visit him soon.
And the girls are like, okay, sure. Sounds good.
You didn't explain why you're in handcuffs, but great.

Speaker 1 So the police take all the girls out of the car, the young, the

Speaker 1 children here,

Speaker 1 and they search the van. And in the trunk, they find a shotgun.
Oh. They're like, what is this here for? Okay,

Speaker 1 interesting.

Speaker 1 So, where the fuck has Mary been?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, first stop. Skeet shooting? Pretty much.
Yeah, we're going out for a nice day of target shooting at the range here.

Speaker 1 First stop, they went to Jackson, Mississippi at a Fairfield Inn, and she paid cash there.

Speaker 1 The next morning, they went to the Orange Beach, Alabama at the Sleep Inn, which is 340 miles from Selmer, if you're keeping track. This is basically a vacation beach spot.

Speaker 1 A lot of tourists here and shit. So she took the girls to the beach and to an amusement park that day.
Oh.

Speaker 1 She actually tells the arresting officer, quote, I just wanted to be with them before they had bad days. You know, have a happy day.
Right. That's what she tells the officer.
He's like, whoa.

Speaker 1 She knew that dad was dead then. Oh, yeah.
Apparently so. So 9.55 p.m., Orange Beach Police Department.
The cops are going to try to talk to her. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you could see in her mug shot, she just looks

Speaker 1 like she's just a stone-faced.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Looks depressed, looks sad, just looks like

Speaker 1 her dog just died.

Speaker 1 Looks tough.

Speaker 1 All the cops were really weirded out by her lack of any emotion whatsoever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Of anything.

Speaker 1 Not even about the kids, nothing. It was just nothing.
She was very flat on the affect there.

Speaker 1 The one assistant police chief, Greg Duck, said there were no tears shed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 He said that no tears shed that I know of.

Speaker 1 And he said, actually, she seemed relieved, Mary.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 here we go. Corporal Stan Stabler, Alabama Investigation or Bureau of Investigation, he sits down with Mary.

Speaker 1 She's calm, real calm, eerily, creepily calm. No tears, no nothing, just just flat.

Speaker 1 So he tries to do the background shit rapport with her. How long you've been married? How was your marriage? She said, I was married nine years, 11 months.

Speaker 1 Good marriage. It was fine.
What about the kids? She said, they're very sweet girls. Okay.

Speaker 1 So he says at one point, step by step, tell me what happened.

Speaker 1 She says nothing. She just stares at him.
She just stares at him.

Speaker 1 He said, why can't you talk to us?

Speaker 1 more silence staring at him

Speaker 1 okay this is this is interesting it's like uh kind of like ruby frankie style you've seen that interrogation when they sit her down

Speaker 1 and she just stares at them and blinks and it's like

Speaker 1 when she stares at them and blinks you're just like Your fucking kid was starving. You fucking, I just want to, I want someone to clothesline her out of her fucking chair.

Speaker 1 I don't care what your excuse is. Your kids are starving and you lock them in rooms.
I will choke you. Give me an excuse.
But give me an excuse for something. Something.
Tell me.

Speaker 1 Anything. She just blinks

Speaker 1 and has that smug look on her face. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 Mary's not like that at all. She's just flat.
Like she looks like she's been through a lot and is like catatonic almost.

Speaker 1 So he said, I feel like you have genuine concern. Tell me why a mother of three, a wife of over nine years, almost 10 years, what would make you you do this? Right.
Since you had the shotgun and all.

Speaker 1 She says, quote, no comment.

Speaker 1 No comment. The strangest thing I've ever heard in an interrogation room.
No comment.

Speaker 1 Like the press is hound, like the paparazzi's hounding her outside of a movie premiere.

Speaker 1 I didn't ask you if you're dating that hot young Starlet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this wasn't what I was asking. What's going on? I didn't ask him if you're, you know, there was trouble on the set with the director here.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 they talk about the ride. He changes gears and he says, well, what about the ride down there? And she said, again, I just wanted to be with them before they had bad days.

Speaker 1 And she said, they've never been to a beach that they remember. So I wanted to take them to the beach.
She said, I wanted to give them one last happy memory, you know, and all that.

Speaker 1 So they said, what about affairs, money problems? Is he having an affair? You having an affair? You guys, what's the deal? She said, no, no major problems. No.

Speaker 1 Good. Okay, so why? So they said, well, explain.
She explained. Matthew's a full-time pastor at his church, and there's about 200 people in the congregation.

Speaker 1 His only income is church salary and some from speaking engagements because they were like, well, break down like financially, what do you guys do?

Speaker 1 You know, that was that income was kind of random whack-a-mole income that you can't count on, just speaking engagements.

Speaker 1 She said, Matthew was planning to start on getting his master's degree in the summer or by the fall, definitely.

Speaker 1 So she said, they asked her, when was the the last time you talked to him? And she said, yesterday morning at home.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So he said, what did y'all discuss? And she said, no real conversation.

Speaker 1 Just no comment. I don't know.
What are you saying? This is weird. So, and Rulebook goes on to say, quote, she had come out from where her mind was hiding just a little bit, but now she scurried back.

Speaker 1 She didn't want to talk about Wednesday morning. Stabler, Stabler, by the way, is Chris Maloney on fucking on SVU.
Yeah, is that his name?

Speaker 1 Stabler, yeah. So that's pretty funny.
There's a Stabler harassing or sitting here interrogating someone.

Speaker 1 Stabler talked quietly to her, asking her to tell him her side of what happened, what problems she faced. He asked her to tell him what was troubling her so much.

Speaker 1 She said, quote, I just can't right now.

Speaker 1 Not right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And so he says, okay.

Speaker 1 And she said, quote, I appreciate, I feel like you have genuine concern, and I do appreciate you.

Speaker 1 I'm just not up to that right now. Not right now.
Not right now. Maybe later.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So he kept talking and she kept talking.

Speaker 1 And Anne Rule goes on to say, Mary Winkler rambled quite a bit, telling him she had heard children's voices when she was handcuffed in an area of the police station.

Speaker 1 And then she realized it was her own children. She said, she thought she was losing her mind for a minute.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 But that's kind of how out of it she is. She didn't even realize that the kids are there too.

Speaker 1 She's kind of out of it.

Speaker 1 She said, I about did a backflip to get out of it because I was in the line of sight. She didn't want the kids to see her in handcuffs.

Speaker 1 She said, those three right there are my only concern right now.

Speaker 1 She, I guess, used.

Speaker 1 They asked her if anybody I can get a hold of for the kids and all that kind of thing. So they had called Matthew's parents.

Speaker 1 So she said, Nana and Papa are going to come get them and all that kind of thing. They're on the way.

Speaker 1 So she felt like she could relax when they arrived because she knew that her mother-in-law would take good care of the kids. So she said, at that point, she could take a breath and relax.

Speaker 1 She was in this interrogation room and didn't know where her kids were before that. They were in some other room and she didn't know what was going on, which would worry any parent, obviously.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Stabler then asked her if she would, would you tell me what happened? Just tell me what happened. Whisper anything.
Tell me something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 he said, I haven't been told really anything myself. I don't know.
I've talked with the girls a little bit, okay, and they told me what they've seen and heard. And she said, right.

Speaker 1 And he said, I need you to fill in those gaps a little bit. All three know to an extent what's taken place.
I don't think the one-year-old knows anything, by the way.

Speaker 1 The one-year-old doesn't know how not to shit in its pants. So I doubt that it knows.
Probably not going to give you much info. Yeah, I wouldn't think so.
So Mary,

Speaker 1 anyway, yeah, all three know to an extent what's taken place. She then said, what did you ask me?

Speaker 1 Which is a weird question. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He said, to tell me what happened. Right.
That's why we're sitting here, remember? Right. Yeah, yeah.
And

Speaker 1 again, she said she wasn't ready to do that yet.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 They went and talked to her kids about the events of the past and anything like that. As that happened, when they're talking about it,

Speaker 1 she listened.

Speaker 1 And then when she finally spoke, she talked, this is from Ann Rule's book, she talked not of her own complicity, but of her concern for Matthew and what the newspapers might say about him.

Speaker 1 Okay. She's concerned with the press spin on

Speaker 1 him.

Speaker 1 What are they going to say about him? Well, she said, quote, no matter what, in the end,

Speaker 1 I don't want him smeared. that's what she said

Speaker 1 they're sitting there going we're trying to smear you at this point yeah you're the one who we found with a shotgun so you're the one we're interested in he is smeared all over the bedroom yeah you've smeared blood everywhere so the mary winkler talked in circles and rule says saying she didn't know what words to use to explain what happened It's a weird word.

Speaker 1 I don't know what words to use. How about you draw us a picture? Yeah.
Something. Stick figures.
She said, sometimes I think something might have happened and then there's no way.

Speaker 1 So he says, did he hurt you?

Speaker 1 Let's go to that. That'll make it easier.
Is there a reason maybe why you did this? And she said, quote, not physically.

Speaker 1 That's her answer.

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Speaker 1 So then they, Stabler asked Mary if she knew her husband's condition at the present time, and she said she didn't. But at one point she asked, has there been a funeral yet?

Speaker 1 Oh. Which it's the next day.
So it's obviously there hasn't been a funeral yet. She's not with it all the time.
Her mind is somewhere else at this moment in time

Speaker 1 so they said what um was he alive when you left the house or do you know for sure and she said i don't know

Speaker 1 so they said

Speaker 1 okay mary

Speaker 1 why did you shoot him

Speaker 1 silence

Speaker 1 they said had you planned ahead of time to shoot him or did it happen just in the spur of the moment And then finally she says, quote, not planned. Okay.
That's all she'll give out at that moment.

Speaker 1 Not Not planned.

Speaker 1 She said she had never shot that gun before.

Speaker 1 It was Matthew's like bird hunting gun or some shit.

Speaker 1 So she kept denying that she had shot Matthew at that point, but then she would go back in her mind to the time when she was driving away from Selmer the night before and just start talking about something else.

Speaker 1 She said, quote, driving down the road, something would go in my head, and I thought there was no way what had just happened. And then I hadn't really seen anything or heard anything.

Speaker 1 I've used my name everywhere I went, and this was just 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.

Speaker 1 Okay?

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 she said, I just don't want to talk about Matthew because I don't want to smear him no matter what. She goes back to that.

Speaker 1 So they said, The shotgun, where was it? Did you load it? Let's start there. So she said, We kept it in the top of the closet out of reach.
I messed it up and put it back. back.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they said, okay.

Speaker 1 They said, how do you know you didn't shoot more than once? And she said, I don't. Oh.

Speaker 1 I don't. I don't know what happened.
She's unaware of what she did. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, back to the Ann Rule book. They said, she spoke now about Matthew.
She'd been thinking about him and about how he had so many rules and schedules for her to follow and

Speaker 1 all this. She said, quote, I love him dearly, but gosh, he just nailed me to the ground.
I was real good for quite some time. My problem was, I got a job at the post office a couple years ago

Speaker 1 and the first of our marriage. I just took it like a mouse.
I didn't think anything different. My mom just took it from my dad and that stupid scenario.
And I got a job where

Speaker 1 I have to have nerve and high self-esteem. And I have been battling this for years.
For some time, at some point, it was really good. Then I don't know.

Speaker 1 We moved over a year ago, February 2005, and it just came back out for some reason. What's this?

Speaker 1 I mean, that is, this is such a,

Speaker 1 I believe everything she said there because the way it came out, it's not planned. That is literally as the thoughts entered her brain, they fell out of her mouth.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Didn't think any different. My mom took it for my dad and that whole stupid scenario.
And I got a job where I have to have this nerve and high self-esteem. She's just emptying whatever's up there.

Speaker 1 There's no like narrative,

Speaker 1 you know what I'm saying? There's no like narrative sheen.

Speaker 1 There's no reason for linear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she's not talking about anything either. No, she's just saying things because I think her, she's not in a good state of mind.
So the stabler said he would knock your self-esteem down.

Speaker 1 And she said, no.

Speaker 1 Just chewing, whatever. And that's the problem.

Speaker 1 It's little things. So I mean, that's what she was thinking about at that moment is the time that he yelled at her for chewing weird or something.

Speaker 1 But that's how she's not, her brain isn't together at this point. She says, I'm just chewing, whatever, and that's the problem.
I have nerve now, and I have self-esteem. Quote, so my ugly came out.

Speaker 1 Okay, so she my ugly came out. Yeah, so he said, don't chew like that, and she

Speaker 1 shot him.

Speaker 1 Not that day, but that's the type of, I think that's what she was saying because they said he would knock your self-esteem down, not that day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And she said, no, just chewing whatever, and that's the problem. So she's saying it's not that, no.
It was just all the time. It was just this big macro thing of her, you know, feeling that.

Speaker 1 So that's about all she says. My ugly came out.
It's about the last thing she says. Okay.
And then she's arrested for first-degree murder. Yeah, my ugly came out.
Okay. My ugly came out.
Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1 So she waives her right to the extradition hearing and is extradited back to Tennessee. The girls are placed with Matthew's parents, Dan and Diane,

Speaker 1 and they're going to be there for the next couple of years. They're going to stay with them.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So there's further investigation. Now we're back in Tennessee.
So now we actually have the cops who have been investigating this talking to her.

Speaker 1 This is Agent John Mayer from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. He's the lead investigator on the case for the TBI.

Speaker 1 He interviews Mary again in Tennessee.

Speaker 1 Now, Now, she gives a little bit different statement. She said, quote,

Speaker 1 I've gotten a call from the bank and we were having troubles, mostly my fault, bad bookkeeping. He was upset with me about that.

Speaker 1 She said he had really been on me lately, criticizing me for things, the way I walk, the way I eat, everything.

Speaker 1 It was just building up to a point. I was tired of it.
I guess I got to a point and snapped.

Speaker 1 And then Oxygen was like, hold on, let me write that down.

Speaker 1 That's That's a nice title. We're going to put a show on for the next 40 years where it's just about women killing people.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So she said, I don't remember getting the gun. The next thing I heard was a loud boom.
Matthew was shot in the back as he lay in bed. He rolled from the bed onto the floor.

Speaker 1 He asked me, his last words were, why?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she said, I said, I'm sorry, I love you. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then he died.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I got no answer.
He said, why? And she said, I'm sorry, I love you. Wow.
She said she even wiped blood away from his mouth. Really? She felt bad.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Then she just took the girls and left and drove away. And went to have a happy day.
Took the girls with her last ones ever. That's it.
She took the gun with her, though, which is weird.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is weird. I don't know why you do that.
I don't know if it was just, she just walked out with it like she was catatonic or what.

Speaker 1 She disconnected the phone, by the way. Yeah.
That's her.

Speaker 1 Just in case he was alive, so he can't call for help.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's filthy. Yeah, she doesn't have an answer of why she disconnected the phone.
She just said she did it and that Matthew was still alive when she left. Wow.

Speaker 1 So they're wondering whether to charge her, you know, now first everyone's first-degree murder when they're charged, but then they, you know, refine it a little bit here.

Speaker 1 So they're wondering, is first-degree murder the best charge for this?

Speaker 1 The evidence they have is she retrieved the gun from the closet. She pointed at at his back.
She pulled the trigger. She shot him.
She unplugged the phone so no help could be summoned.

Speaker 1 And then she fled the scene with the murder weapon and drove 340 miles away. That doesn't look good if you look at it from a statistical standpoint.

Speaker 1 So they go first-degree murder, they indict her on.

Speaker 1 If convicted, that's life in prison with a minimum of 51 years. God dang.
So that's a big one.

Speaker 1 She gets a couple of defense attorneys who are kind of hot shots in Memphis here.

Speaker 1 Steve Farisi Sr. and Leslie Ballin, B-A-L-L-I-N, Ballin.

Speaker 1 They're very good lawyers, high-profile, very good lawyers, get a lot of people acquitted.

Speaker 1 They agree to represent Mary pro fucking bono. Really? That's how big of a case this is at the time.
Wow. They're like, it's better for us just to get the pub.

Speaker 1 And they said also they believed Mary is the victim here.

Speaker 1 They do. That's what they believe.
And I think

Speaker 1 over time, you can needle a woman down enough.

Speaker 1 They say there's more

Speaker 1 that Mary didn't talk about because she was embarrassed in the police interview. Oh, right.
Which also makes sense because

Speaker 1 she does seem embarrassed to talk about anything in the police interview. She seems like she's normally, she's a pastor's wife and all that.
She's normally very private, I feel.

Speaker 1 I just got no comment right now. No, I just got no comment.

Speaker 1 So during the bond hearing, the defense argues that Mary's a victim of abuse, of both verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Speaker 1 And she snapped after years of torment. The shooting was an accident.
The gun just went off. She didn't mean to kill him.
The judge says $750,000 bail.

Speaker 1 The defense says it's excessive, calling it, quote,

Speaker 1 tantamount to no bond at all.

Speaker 1 $750,000? $750,000. No, she doesn't have $750,000.
So she sits there for a few months.

Speaker 1 Then, on August 12th, her father, Clark, mortgages his properties to pay her bond. Wow.

Speaker 1 And bails her out of jail. So she is released from jail on August 12th, 2006.
Jesus. Conditions are: she has to live with friends of hers in McMinnville, Tennessee, who are Rudy and Kathy Thompson.

Speaker 1 Not allowed to leave the state. Can't contact the children without supervision.
Okay.

Speaker 1 That's it. She gets a job at a dry cleaning shop while awaiting trial.
Okay.

Speaker 1 That's a tough interview.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I have a murder trial coming up, but it's not for months. I mean, I got, I think I can work here a while, here for the long haul.

Speaker 1 That's tough. I don't see myself in five years.
Well,

Speaker 1 depends. Geez, let's see.

Speaker 1 Depends on what this judge thinks.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Maybe a GED course, macrame.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You'll be making some shit, possibly. License plates.
I don't know here.

Speaker 1 So she's doing that. It's the Cleaners Express shop.

Speaker 1 The town of McMinnville is on her side.

Speaker 1 They all believe her. Her friends

Speaker 1 are there and stuff, and they all believe her. November 2006, cover of People fucking magazine.
Stop it. People magazine.
What is it? Whole cover, not a partial cover.

Speaker 1 It's a family photo of the five of them in front of the Christmas tree. And it said, why did she kill him? The minister's shooting.
They seem the perfect couple.

Speaker 1 Then cops say she shot her husband in the back. The story of Mary and Matthew Winkler.
And there they are. So big profile.
Very sympathetic to everybody involved.

Speaker 1 Photos of her looking very nice and not, you know, murdery. Crucifix, demure expressions and things like that.
Her father and siblings give interviews as well. Oh.

Speaker 1 And this is where they're trying to really turn public sentiment to her side. Her father, Clark, says, quote, physical, mental, verbal abuse.
I don't know how she took it.

Speaker 1 She's a stronger individual than I am.

Speaker 1 Mary's sister, Tabitha, said, I don't remember hearing her laugh. She was not a happy person.

Speaker 1 Okay. Another sister, Amanda, said, I saw a bruise on Mary.
I didn't say anything because I didn't know how to. If I was to say, who gave that to you,

Speaker 1 and that would make her mad, then I wouldn't see her again. Oh, so they're saying that he sucked all the joy out of her.

Speaker 1 He sucked the joy out of her, and they saw bruises and things like that, and she was scared. So that's a, you know, that says like a campaign of

Speaker 1 abuse. Conserved an effort to

Speaker 1 be holding someone hostage almost, you know.

Speaker 1 So her defense attorney, Leslie Ballin, said, what went on behind their closed doors is going to have to be told. Some of what we've got from the state of Tennessee touches on sexual abuse.

Speaker 1 Good Morning America. Mary's family appears on Good Morning America.
So they got out in front of this. The People Magazine article is based from her point of view.
Sure. Good Morning America

Speaker 1 appearance is Mary's family. Yeah.
So it's interesting. Now, they go further on Good Morning America.

Speaker 1 Mary's family appears there, and Clark Freeman says he saw bad bruises on her and the heaviest of makeup covering facial bruises. Oh.

Speaker 1 A friend, Rudy Thompson, who she was staying with in McMinnville, said that she saw Mary with a black eye at church one Sunday.

Speaker 1 Another friend, Amy Redmond, said he was an authority figure and he made the decisions, basically. It was obvious.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 Mary's father said Mary always denied everything to her father's face, saying, and he said, she said, no, daddy, everything's all right. Everything's all right.

Speaker 1 So they're definitely trying to get public sentiment on their side here. Sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 And she's doing a good job of it until New Year's Eve, 2006, where that takes a slight step back. What happened now? She is spotted out at a bar in McMinnville

Speaker 1 smoking and drinking and laughing.

Speaker 1 Which, ma'am, people got to smoke and drink and laugh, but when you're on bail for out on bond for murder and you're saying that you're so downtrodden and you're trying to turn the public sentiment, obviously you can't just be downtrodden and feel like that 24 hours a day.

Speaker 1 You got to have a moment where something's fine. That happens.
New Year, new me. It's coming up.
We're about to switch over the calendar and we're going to change this thing.

Speaker 1 Go to a funeral. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Maybe this is an Italian thing, but Italian funerals afterwards, when we go back to the house and everybody eats and people are playing cards and shooting dice and eating and sandwiches and shit, eating salted cured meats, everybody's fucking laughing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No one's sitting there going, oh, it's such a, it's none of that shit. It's over now.
Now we're laughing. We got guys with their dress shirts off, wife beaters on, fucking rolling dice and shit.

Speaker 1 It's a different scenario at that point. Well, that person's gone now.
We start over.

Speaker 1 That's it. What are we going to do? We went to the funeral.
We were all sad. We stood there.
The women yelled and cried. My grandmother tried to jump in the casket.
They all did that.

Speaker 1 And now it's over. Have some prosciutto.
Shut the fuck up. If I see a battered woman who

Speaker 1 fights back and shoots the guy, if she's not smiling after that, then why do it? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 That's true, too. Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 If you're not jacked that this shit's finally over. I guess.
Yeah, but that's not the act. That's funny, but it's not the actual emotional.
Obviously, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You shouldn't be out there just partying up, but it seems like it seems

Speaker 1 possible. It's been nine months.
Yeah. Also, is the other thing.
So it seems like you'd want to.

Speaker 1 If anyone needed stress relief, it'd be someone who's on bail for murder. But at the same time, if you're trying to make, if your whole goal here is to get the public on your side,

Speaker 1 going out smoking, drinking, and laughing on New Year's Eve isn't the way to do it at all. So a customer captures her on cell phone video and it airs on local TV.
So that is not good for her. No.

Speaker 1 The public is pissed. People are pissed.
People that were on her side are now against her.

Speaker 1 They said, this is a grieving widow that she's so sad. She's so abused.
And she's so traumatized. She's got to go out.
Yeah, people who are traumatized have a a drink and laugh once in a while still.

Speaker 1 But anyway, she's out partying and doing all this. The defense calls it a one-time thing, saying she's allowed to unwind.
It was New Year's Eve, it wasn't a random Wednesday night.

Speaker 1 It was New Year's Eve. She's allowed to chill out.
The prosecution doesn't think so so much here.

Speaker 1 So in Anne Ruhl's book,

Speaker 1 Smoke, Mirrors, and Murders, that's what it's called.

Speaker 1 She, they say that Ms. Ruhl also

Speaker 1 briefly discussed the incident on New Year's Eve when Mary was photographed in a bar with a beer holding a cigarette.

Speaker 1 The man who snapped the picture with a cell phone camera subsequently asked Mary, are you the preacher killer? Hey.

Speaker 1 She laughed and said, yeah, you want to be next?

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. Not good.
That does not look good for you. Not look good.

Speaker 1 Making light of the situation is just publicly. We get psychologically, it makes sense, but publicly, it looks terrible.
Not good. No.

Speaker 1 So now her probation officer, who's keeping track of her out on bond, said that she'd done everything she'd been required to. Sitting

Speaker 1 at a bar of a restaurant does not violate probation. There's nothing, no alcohol

Speaker 1 caveats in her probation or anything like that.

Speaker 1 So that's it. She's not supposed to kill anybody, I believe, or see her kids without whatever.
Yeah, that's a pretty good rule.

Speaker 1 Another problem for her is that she also gets a boyfriend while she's out here. What?

Speaker 1 Which, again, people meet people and it goes on,

Speaker 1 but it doesn't look great. If your whole case is based on public image, it doesn't look good.

Speaker 1 While she's working at the dry cleaner, she met the boss's brother. His name is Darryl Pillow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Daryl Pillow.
So they start dating. Daryl Pillow said, I saw interest in Mary and I thought Mary saw interest in me.
Saw interest. I've never heard.

Speaker 1 Have you ever heard it put like that? When someone met somebody? No, expressed. I have never seen

Speaker 1 saw interest. I was attracted to Mary.
I mean, we do have a lot in common. We laugh.
We got the same hobbies. It felt very normal.
Felt like it was meant to be.

Speaker 1 He said, the first time that we sat on the couch and I hugged her, she said, oh, this is, I've missed this. And that's what she needed.
She needed somebody to hold her and hug her.

Speaker 1 So on

Speaker 1 weekends, while Mary was in the mental health facility later on, we'll talk about here,

Speaker 1 they get closer and talked about marriage

Speaker 1 and Daryl said we kind of joked around about it but it wasn't nothing serious it's not like we set a date or anything maybe years down the road may happen I don't know but the option's there yeah

Speaker 1 now

Speaker 1 here is Mary talking about the abuse okay

Speaker 1 at different things different times she said he threatened me with the shotgun many times putting it in my face he told me if I ever talked back to him that he would cut me into a million pieces.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So she said that he just flail.

Speaker 1 He just flailed. He's a big guy and he was just all over.
He'd point his finger inches away from my nose. Whatever he was upset about, it was my fault.

Speaker 1 She said he kicked her out of bed, punched her in the face, choked her, pushed her, and constantly criticized her as well. Wow.

Speaker 1 He said, quote, if I was fat, my hair wasn't right, the girls, if something went wrong, it was my fault. If it rained, it was my fault.
I didn't know when it was coming ever.

Speaker 1 She said, weight, hair, long or short, family, friends, keeping up the house, something about the girls, just very, very critical.

Speaker 1 She also said that

Speaker 1 he isolated her as well,

Speaker 1 saying, quote, he just sat me down and told me I was his wife and we were family now.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she also said that she needed his permission to get a haircut. Oh.

Speaker 1 Come on, dude.

Speaker 1 Get a haircut? Get a haircut. Some guys are real weird about their wife's hair and I don't understand why.
Who gives a hair?

Speaker 1 I don't fucking care what you do to your head. Who cares? They're weird about it?

Speaker 1 You act like, yes, you know that. There's tons of guys who are weird about their hair.
But guys, like... I mean, I can understand being weird about being attracted to something.

Speaker 1 But then you're in a relationship with someone and you tell them not to fuck with their hair. Yeah, that's very common for controlling.

Speaker 1 We've maybe mentioned that a good 40 times over the course of the show. Yeah, but I don't understand it still.
If you're

Speaker 1 in the relationship already, I don't get it, though. I know it explains that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't get it either.

Speaker 1 I'll never understand that. If you're a fan of the future, I don't get nuclear

Speaker 1 vision either, but I know it happens. Yeah, you know, like if you're already in a relationship with somebody, they've got a

Speaker 1 they're going to fucking change. You're going to be upset when they fucking age too? Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 he wants her to get the haircut he wants her to get. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Does he have a choice in it? Who fucking knows what weird,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 1 Whatever Eve had. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 That's the point. It's like,

Speaker 1 what is the biblical choice that somebody would want?

Speaker 1 Long hair they want on women for the most part. Those guys.
There's also the fucking shoulder length bubble flip thing that is very common. Yeah.
So who knows? She's plain, I guess, is the answer.

Speaker 1 Plain, I think, is what we're doing. Nothing that attracts attention, colors or any of that shit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Mary says also she asked for a divorce six or seven years into the marriage.

Speaker 1 She said that he asked, Do you want a divorce? And she said yes. And he said, Well, we can't get a divorce, so that's not happening.
I'm the preacher. I can't get divorced.
That'll fuck everything up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that looks bad. Then there's the sex stuff.
Okay. Oh.

Speaker 1 Oh, here we go. Now we get

Speaker 1 more. Oh, man.
So

Speaker 1 she says that he forced her to wear outfits and shit in the bedroom. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Platform heels, big white platform heels, like stripper shoes, big white ones.

Speaker 1 Eight inch tall, by the way, the heels are. Oh, it's got to be a specific length, the highest ones.
An Afro wig. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So basically, like he wants to fuck Foxy Brown is what he's trying to do. Like, he's like, yeah,

Speaker 1 Pam Greer in 1977, if you could make yourself that, that'd be excellent. He saw Black Girl in

Speaker 1 Austin Powers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, she was being Foxy Brown. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's interesting. So she also,

Speaker 1 she claims that he wanted her to watch pornography with him as well

Speaker 1 and forced her to engage in oral and anal sex. Well, the oral you should be engaging in.
That's fucking easy. If you're married, put your mouth on it.

Speaker 1 But if you don't want any in the butt, completely understandable. Understood.

Speaker 1 Understood. Everybody should be licking each other, but in the butt is a, that's to each his own.
Yeah, you know what, though? I think if

Speaker 1 you need it in her ass, then you should be open to it in yours, too. There you go.
If she likes it. If you need it.
If she likes it, great.

Speaker 1 Throw it on in there. But if you're forcing it in there,

Speaker 1 it's a different story.

Speaker 1 So anyway,

Speaker 1 she called them unnatural acts. Oh.
Which don't call oral sex in marriage an unnatural act. Are you joking? Get the fuck out of here.
That's crazy. I'm sorry, Mayor Bear, but yeah,

Speaker 1 that's third base. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're right. Yeah, that's third fucking base.
That's shy of actual. That's not even a homer.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You just got a slow job, you loser. Yeah, that's what kids consider anyway, third base.
What does the 16-year-olds say to each other?

Speaker 1 Whereas sex is a home run and anal is like champagne in the locker room afterwards, right?

Speaker 1 Corks are popping. That's extra bad.
That's my grinning.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you won the series at that point.

Speaker 1 So here is a story that the cops kind of pieced together of kind of with all accounts because Patricia has a memory of this as well. So apparently

Speaker 1 baby, Brianna, woke up crying around 6.15.

Speaker 1 Mary claims that Matthew kicked her out of bed, literally.

Speaker 1 She said, caught me somewhere in the low of my back and I was on the floor. Oh, he shot.
So the baby's fun.

Speaker 1 Baby's crying, and and he's like, take care of that, bitch, and kicked her out of bed, which is, wow, that's insane. And then come back here and blow me.

Speaker 1 Hey, blow me.

Speaker 1 But apparently, Matthew then got up to try to comfort the baby, kicked her out of bed, and while she's recovering from figuring that out, then Mary took over and Matthew returned to bed, but he was all pissed off because in his mind, the baby cries, that's Mary's job.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do that, apparently. So Mary attends to Brianna.
Then they went downstairs and started some coffee. Then she went back upstairs, went to the bedroom closet, and grabbed the shotgun.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was the last moment. Walked to the bed, pointed it at Matthew's back.
His back was turned, never saw her coming with it, and shot him.

Speaker 1 77 pellets of birdshot go through him, tear up all the organs and everything. That's on the bed.
He rolls onto the floor because he was on the bed. He was literally in bed when she did this.

Speaker 1 You know, he says, why? She says, I'm sorry. I love you, wiped blood from his mouth.
Then Patricia came in the room

Speaker 1 and said, what was that big boom?

Speaker 1 It was a shotgun blast at 6.15 in the morning.

Speaker 1 My dog barks at the Amazon guy at 8.30. I'm like, what the fuck is that? Jesus Christ, God damn it.
This is a shotgun. Out.
Yeah, someone do something.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 apparently.

Speaker 1 Mary just told Patricia, daddy's hurt, we're leaving.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're leaving. He'll take it.
We're leaving.

Speaker 1 So now it's going to come down to, this is going to come down to, well, who's the jury going to believe?

Speaker 1 I mean, science. Will they believe her?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, the science is 100%.
We know what happened.

Speaker 1 And she admitted. She shot him in the back while he was laying in bed

Speaker 1 and he bled out. So that's definitely, she definitely committed

Speaker 1 the killing anyway.

Speaker 1 But will the jury believe her in terms of that he's been abusing her for years and that this was, you know, a moment of snapping from being abused for years and years in every way, shape, and form possible, which if it is, then the jury believes that, then it's understandable, you know?

Speaker 1 So basically,

Speaker 1 there's no medical evidence of abuse is the problem. Right.
There's also no medical evidence that it didn't happen. No, there's none.
So yeah, you can't prove a negative, obviously.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, but there's no, she, from her side, to claim that she was battered and everything else, she has to prove some some

Speaker 1 abuse. Yeah.
So there's no medical abuse. There's no police reports, never a hospital visit,

Speaker 1 none of that, which obviously there's tons of abuse that goes on that does not get reported. And especially if you're in a position like a pastor and a pastor's wife, then your whole income is gone.

Speaker 1 That's almost like if you're a quarterback's wife. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If he beats the shit out of you and you call the cops,

Speaker 1 now he gets cut and you and your children lose millions of dollars, too. So that's why a lot of women don't report it.

Speaker 1 Not that they should do that, but that's they don't because they go, well, fuck, that's all everything we have.

Speaker 1 So anyway,

Speaker 1 friends and church members, tons and tons of them, dozens and dozens, describe Matthew as gentle and very non-violent.

Speaker 1 And even nine-year-old daughter Patricia will testify and has talked to the police and said she never saw her father mistreat her mother. Uh-oh.
At all. No pushing, no yelling, no anything.

Speaker 1 Which is just. I was going to say she took it out of the kids' arms.
And a lot of people do that. They don't do it in front of the kids.

Speaker 1 You know? There's a lot of people that do it in front of nobody. That's what I mean, which is even scarier because that means they can control it and then

Speaker 1 direct it at times. They think they can get away with it.
Yeah. Also, no diabolical wrongness of it.
If you're not

Speaker 1 in front of anybody, you're going to shame about it. Absolutely.
It's fucking diabolical. So, April 9th, 2007 is the trial.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is a trial with the jury as 10 women and two men. Oh.

Speaker 1 And they did that exactly what the defense wanted, as many women on the jury as possible, because one or two of them may have gone through this or even known someone who went through it or their mother went through it or their sister or some chick they knew in college.

Speaker 1 Every woman has heard many stories

Speaker 1 of this.

Speaker 1 Whether it's personal or a friend or family member. And they know that.
And that's smart if you're a defense. That's what you're trying to do.
So they asked potential jurors these questions.

Speaker 1 Can emotional abuse be as damaging as physical abuse, in your opinion?

Speaker 1 To get an idea where these jurors stood. Have you ever talked to someone who didn't listen? Which is a weird, interesting question.

Speaker 1 Have you ever wondered why someone would stay in an abusive relationship? That's another question. So that's what they asked.

Speaker 1 Here is more about the jury from the Ann Rule book here.

Speaker 1 The jurors chosen were a fair representation of the citizens of McNary County.

Speaker 1 They would be sequestered, although after so much publicity, it seemed a little like locking the barn door after the horses ran away. Yeah, they already have heard everything from everyone.

Speaker 1 They watched, they read People magazine and watched Good Morning America, for Christ's sake.

Speaker 1 One potential juror was excused quickly when she said that the Winklers had been her neighbors and that Matthew had once threatened to kill her dog if it came in her yard again.

Speaker 1 They got that guy. Wow, that's funny.
So that's a dismissal.

Speaker 1 So the defense attorney submitted a list of 44 potential witnesses, while the DA only listed 13 witnesses.

Speaker 1 And a lot of them are the police that found her, the cops that arrested her, the medical examiner, the child,

Speaker 1 all of that. So the woman on trial scarcely resembled the image of Mary Winkler at her arraignment 13 months earlier.
Then she had seemed a timid child.

Speaker 1 Now she held her head up, carried a briefcase, and often strode into court ahead of Farisi and Ballin.

Speaker 1 She had dozens of hours of therapy, received many, many letters of support from around the county. She was bolstered by her attorneys.
So now she's confident.

Speaker 1 Walking in head up

Speaker 1 here.

Speaker 1 So now we'll talk about this, a couple of things in the trial here. During the opening,

Speaker 1 The prosecution opening, Walt Freeland is the prosecutor, characterized Mary as a cold-blooded woman who had intentionally shot her husband in the back as he lay in bed early in the morning.

Speaker 1 He said she had deliberately unplugged the cord from their phone so that Matthew could not call for help after she left.

Speaker 1 He noted the financial catastrophe that was about to descend on the Winklers because Mary had been carrying out a check kiting scheme since November 2005, depositing phony checks in several bank accounts.

Speaker 1 Wow. He said the house of cards that she set up was falling down.

Speaker 1 The defense will not produce any evidence of any good reason Matthew Winkler was murdered by Mary Winkler because there is no good reason. Right.
Okay.

Speaker 1 The defense,

Speaker 1 Steve Farisi's opening, said, called the marriage a living hell behind closed doors. Oh.

Speaker 1 He told jurors that Matthew's demands made Mary tiptoe on eggshells, and even then, everything she did seemed to displease him.

Speaker 1 The lawyer said he would destroy objects that she loved. He would isolate her from her family, and he would abuse her.
He would tell her that she couldn't eat lunch because she was too fat.

Speaker 1 Not only did she have to be perfect, her children had to be perfect too.

Speaker 1 So, this is from the pastor's wife by Diane Fanning about the courtroom atmosphere on the first day.

Speaker 1 They say the court, the gallery was packed with reporters from as far away as Japan and England. Oh,

Speaker 1 imagine you're from Japan and you go to Selmer, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 You're like, where the fuck is this?

Speaker 1 Interesting. Cameras flashed the moment Mary Winkler entered, wearing a simple white blouse and black slacks, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Speaker 1 She looked more like a Sunday school teacher than a woman accused of murdering her preacher husband, which is exactly what they want her to look like. Yeah, that's what you're going for.

Speaker 1 Now, the prosecution's case is this. Shotgun, 12-age,

Speaker 1 pump action, 12-gauge. Mary had to rack it to load it.
Oh, yeah. So

Speaker 1 you couldn't have just pulled it. You couldn't have just gotten boomed by accident.

Speaker 1 Got a racket. That's a deliberate action.

Speaker 1 77 pellets of bird shots, broke his spine, destroyed his organs. He bled out slowly.

Speaker 1 They're putting that. He unplugged phone from the wall jack so he couldn't call for help.
Mary drove 340 miles, taking the murder weapon,

Speaker 1 paid with cash everywhere, and made no phone calls.

Speaker 1 Clearly trying to hide.

Speaker 1 They said the money, Nigerian scam, $5,000 overdrawn. Banks wanting answers on March 22nd.
Matthew shot just hours before they were supposed to go to the banks and have to put all this on the table.

Speaker 1 Wow. This is from

Speaker 1 Walt Freeland's opening here. The defendant put a 12-gauge shotgun to the back of a sleeping man, her husband, the father of her children, and pulled the trigger.

Speaker 1 Then she fled the state with those little girls while he bled to death on the bedroom floor. That, ladies and gentlemen, is not self-defense.
That is first-degree murder. You bet.

Speaker 1 The defense say, no, no, no. Battered woman who snapped.
That's it. They said it's self-defense.
At the most, it's manslaughter, but it sure as fuck isn't first-degree murder.

Speaker 1 Mary lived in fear, isolation, sexual abuse, criticism, physical abuse. She tried to leave, but Matthew wouldn't let her, saying divorce was not allowed, and she was trapped.

Speaker 1 They say Matthew kicked her out of bed. She went to check on the baby.
Matthew then tried to suffocate the baby by covering her mouth and nose to stop her from crying, as the defense is claiming.

Speaker 1 She said that they say Mary was terrified that he was going to kill the baby. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So she took the baby, then retrieved the shotgun, not to kill him, to, quote, force him to talk through their problems.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's talk about our issues.

Speaker 1 Let's, yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's talk, sweetie.

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 She said, though, the gun went off accidentally Oh, and she panicked and fled. Totally.
In the midst of wanting to talk seriously, it went off. It went off.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yep. They said Mary Winkler did not wake up on March 22nd, 2006, and decide to kill the man she loved.

Speaker 1 She woke up, and for one tragic moment, she could not take one more day of the abuse, the humiliation, and the terror. All right.
Witnesses here.

Speaker 1 We got bank tellers testifying about the fraudulent checks from Mary, all signed by Mary, which she signs most of the checks, so that even if Matthew knew about it, because part of the defense is that Matthew knew about all of this stuff and was just involved in

Speaker 1 everything as she was, in check kiting and all that kind of shit.

Speaker 1 They talk about the overdrawn account, the phone calls demanding that we've called her so many times to say you two have to come in.

Speaker 1 They get church members who testify Matthew was a good man and a good father and a good husband, never violent, never angry, never abusive.

Speaker 1 Again, they wouldn't know that from where they are, but still. They bring in Patricia, age nine.

Speaker 1 And they said, was your father a good father? And she says, yes, sir. Did he ever hurt your mother? No, sir.

Speaker 1 She describes the morning of the shooting, hearing a big boom, and ran into the bedroom and saw daddy on the floor groaning and asked mommy what happened. And she said, daddy's hurt.
We're leaving.

Speaker 1 That's what the kid remembers.

Speaker 1 While he's groaning. Groaning.
She said Oh, boy. This poor kid saw her dad on the floor.
That's rough, man.

Speaker 1 Here are some now the defense witnesses.

Speaker 1 Here is from the Ann Rule book.

Speaker 1 Quote, the prosecution had presented a woman who was about to be exposed for writing bad checks, a woman who had admitted to shooting her husband in the back before she ran away to another state.

Speaker 1 Steve Feriesley and Leslie Ballin faced a formidable challenge as they would now try to rebuild Mary's side of the case.

Speaker 1 They presented a number of witnesses who vouched for Mary Winkler's positive image in the community and in her church community, and they set about demonizing Matthew.

Speaker 1 Okay, which is what you got to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's fucked, though. Dr.
Lynn Zager, the forensic pathologist who went 41 sessions with Mary Winkler, testified for over two hours.

Speaker 1 If Mary herself should not take the stand, Zager had clearly committed

Speaker 1 her patient's life to memory, almost from birth to the morning Matthew died. Wow.
The psychologist said she had diagnosed Mary with mild depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Speaker 1 She traced the post-traumatic stress disorder back to the time that Mary's sister died suddenly from a heart attack. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The Freeman family. Was it a heart attack?

Speaker 1 No, it was the drowning, but I don't know why they put it like that, but that's fine. Yeah, that's what she said in the book.
And who knows? Because we didn't know if she had MS or

Speaker 1 MD or this. Nobody ever knew what the hell, or palsy.
We had no idea.

Speaker 1 So she said the Freeman family had no counseling at that time. Dr.
Zager felt Mary had carried the emotional burden ever after.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's fair. We've all had childhood traumas and tragedies and seen bad things.
And although Matthew had controlled Mary, she tried to excuse his actions to Dr. Zager.
they also said.

Speaker 1 So she was trying to make excuses for him.

Speaker 1 She often said that Matthew helped her to be better. He helped her to improve herself.
He was concerned about her improving herself. This is what she said on the stand.

Speaker 1 Dr. Zager presented Mary Winkler as most vulnerable for domestic violence, a woman already psychologically damaged who'd been

Speaker 1 subjected to a decade of emotionally abusive treatment by her minister husband.

Speaker 1 The defense had come up with their scenario of Matthew's murder, and now they padded out that skeletal structure with more and more witnesses.

Speaker 1 A Tennessee highway patrolman testified to his contact with Matthew and McMinnville when he'd visited his terminally ill grandfather, who was a neighbor of the Winklers.

Speaker 1 The trooper said Matthew had walked across the street and shouted about a dog that was keeping him awake.

Speaker 1 A different dog now. Oh, he hates dogs.
He fucking hates, which I don't trust him right there. Especially

Speaker 1 a barking-ass dog. He cannot take it.
Well, this is a small barking dog that was keeping him awake. That's why I know it's a different dog because a Rottweiler will never be called a small dog.

Speaker 1 He'll never be considered a small party. No.

Speaker 1 So the patrolman said he'd heard about the minister's reputation as a bully and that the neighborhood had nicknamed him, quote, the Tasmanian devil. Is that right? Apparently he comes out swinging.

Speaker 1 He's crazy.

Speaker 1 Matthew's parents and siblings watched the proceedings. His brother Dan looked startlingly like Matthew, so much so that it was almost as if the victim himself was in the courtroom.

Speaker 1 All three of Winkler's sons, Jacob, Matthew, and Daniel, were large men who had once been athletes. Diane Winkler, Mary's mother-in-law, was extremely poised, attractive, and beautifully dressed.

Speaker 1 She must have been a daunting example for

Speaker 1 Mary to emulate during her 10-year marriage. While the Winklers had been somewhat supportive of Mary right after she was arrested, they no longer were.
Now they're against her, for sure.

Speaker 1 Asked about a time in McMinnville when Matthew had allegedly locked Mary out of their home,

Speaker 1 his father testified that on two occasions, Matthew had had a bad reaction to medications he'd taken for a toothache and an upset stomach and became disoriented. Oh.

Speaker 1 That might explain such an occasion, if it had even happened, really. Okay.
But he said, if it was, I'm sure it was one of the times Matthew took medication, had a bad reaction. So

Speaker 1 the only time he's ever been mean, it was, you know, toothache, ambisol gone wrong. You know how it goes.
So Diane Winkler remembered one of his bizarre reactions to his medications.

Speaker 1 She said he had a hallucination. He saw a woman with black hair at the end of the hall coming at him with a knife, she testified.
What? What drugs are they giving him? That's what I mean.

Speaker 1 Toothache drugs. Holy shit.
Do they give him mushrooms for his toothache? They give him fucking OxyLSD for his goddamn...

Speaker 1 This is unbelievable. Wow.
I've never had hallucinations from a drug for pain.

Speaker 1 The only thing I've ever had hallucinations on are drugs I took to get hallucinations from.

Speaker 1 Mushrooms and acid. Wow.
So anyway, they say that caused a gasp in the courtroom. An hour later,

Speaker 1 outside the justice center, townspeople wondered about the possibility of illegal drugs being involved. By the way, Matthew and his whole

Speaker 1 no drugs of any kind in the system, not even iduprofen, just so we know here.

Speaker 1 They said Mary had suffered a black eye in McMinnville, but she had explained it away at the time, saying she'd been playing with the girls and been accidentally hit, possibly by an elbow.

Speaker 1 TBI criminal investigator Howard Patterson and Phil Hampton, a forensic computer expert, both testified about, quote, certain images

Speaker 1 retrieved from the Winklers' computers. 263 images had been printed out.

Speaker 1 They didn't spell out what the images were, but we find out later they were pornographic. They were fucking naked women, porn pictures, downloads of porn, some stills, some videos.
Oh.

Speaker 1 But definitely shit that no one thought was on Matthew's goddamn computer being Mr. Jesus and everything.

Speaker 1 The earth is 6,000 years old, but in that 6,000 years, we figured out how to make porn and video. So let's get it on, motherfucker.
Yeah. I'm beaten.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Back and forth testimony and exhibits went.

Speaker 1 A church secretary at the Central Church of Christ in McMinnville, who had worked there for 35 years, testified that Matthew had been nice when he first came to her,

Speaker 1 to the church, but he began to treat others as lower than himself.

Speaker 1 She said that he soon began to give orders, stepping out of bounds considerably.

Speaker 1 She told jurors that she had heard him speak to Mary angrily and that he sometimes locked his wife and children in his office for 20 to 30 minutes. Why? What? Get in there, and there you go.

Speaker 1 You stay in there for

Speaker 1 you in 20 minutes. That makes no sense, okay?

Speaker 1 The only time I've any heard of anybody locking their wife anywhere is Macho Man Savage locking Elizabeth up in dressing rooms during wrestling shows and shit.

Speaker 1 And he was a fucking psycho with that shit. So

Speaker 1 anyway, that's what she said. She said when she asked him why, he said it was, quote, to keep them safe.

Speaker 1 They're at church. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They have to be locked in an office? What's going on out in church, man?

Speaker 1 She also testified that he had made frivolous purchases on church accounts.

Speaker 1 Timothy Parrish, a pulpit minister at the McMinnville Church, took the stand to say that he felt the Winklers' marriage was not as happy as his own.

Speaker 1 I mean, they seemed happy, but I always looked and said, we're much happier. I bet I'm happier than them.
I bet my wife is better than his wife, and I'm nicer to her than he is.

Speaker 1 Sometimes Mary seemed happy, but there was other times when she didn't seem very happy and when she seemed like she was trying to cause problems or something.

Speaker 1 Church secretary said that she had heard Matthew berating Mary, heard harsh words and anger.

Speaker 1 We got family and friends saying black eyes,

Speaker 1 heavy makeup. Mary's cowering and isolated.

Speaker 1 Clark Freeman, the dad, said, I saw terrible bruises. I confronted her.
She denied it.

Speaker 1 Psychologist Lynn Zager, again, says that she suffers from mild depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that started when her sister died, when Mary was 13. I was right.

Speaker 1 I knew Mary was the one who was 13, and got worse from Matthew's abuse.

Speaker 1 She said it's a snowball effect

Speaker 1 from that.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, she said that Mary told her that Matthew was verbally, emotionally, sexually, and physically inappropriate to her at times.

Speaker 1 She also said that Mary accused Matthew of putting his hand over the nose of their one-year-old daughter to stop her from crying on that morning. And

Speaker 1 she said that Mary said that Matthew has done this to their two other children as well. Oh,

Speaker 1 I mean, they'll stop crying before they die.

Speaker 1 Is that the

Speaker 1 either way? They're going to stop crying. Is that what you're doing there? I don't, That's crazy.

Speaker 1 She said also, Mary could not form intent to commit a crime because of her compromised mental state. Oh,

Speaker 1 there you go. And then finally, Mary testifies.
Yeah. She has to.
She has to.

Speaker 1 It's all based on her, man. So if she gets up there and says what she needs to, then it'll help.
So Mary testifies.

Speaker 1 She's very soft-spoken, eyes downcast, very humble, doesn't come off as, yeah, that's right. None of that chin in the air bullshit like the Kasotis guy was up there.

Speaker 1 That Nicholas Kasotis we did a few weeks back.

Speaker 1 He was just acting like real confident about everything on the stand. None of that shit.

Speaker 1 She describes her marriage. She said he criticized her, quote, weight, hair, long or short, family, friends, keeping up the house, something about the girls, just very, very critical.

Speaker 1 She said,

Speaker 1 he just sat me down and told him that I was his wife and we were family and we're going to cut off from the friends.

Speaker 1 He said, talk about physical abuse that we talked about, kicked her, punched her in the face, threatened to cut her into a million pieces.

Speaker 1 She said he threatened me with the shotgun many times, put it in my face. And then she describes the sexual stuff.
Here we go. Which in a court in a small town in Tennessee is like...

Speaker 1 It's a bomb going off.

Speaker 1 Like if you watch, you know, the staircase trial.

Speaker 1 Okay, if you watch the staircase documentary and you see parts of the trial, they convict him almost entirely on the prosecutor

Speaker 1 freaking the jury out with sexual things. So that is something that's easily done in this part of the country at some point.

Speaker 1 If you have dealing with very religious people who don't deal with outside of their circle sexual stuff very often, they kind of get freaked out by shit.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 anyway, she said Mary describes Matthew forcing her to watch pornography, forcing her to engage in oral and anal sex, called them unnatural acts.

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 the defense attorney pulls out a bag. Here we go.
What's in there?

Speaker 1 And says, what's in that sack, Mary?

Speaker 1 And gives it to Mary. Mary pulls it out.
It is the pair of white platform eight-inch stripper shoes and an Afro wig. She puts them on there.

Speaker 1 She puts them on? No, no, she puts them on the

Speaker 1 places them. The jury has an audible gasp.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 There they are. Because she is telling the truth about that.

Speaker 1 And they said, where'd you get that wig, Mary? And she said, from Matthew. And they said,

Speaker 1 why were those shoes bought, Mary? Matthew wanted me to wear them to dress up.

Speaker 1 And she said, dress up for what purpose, Mary? And she said, sex.

Speaker 1 And the jury was just, I mean, hands over their mouths, just horrified.

Speaker 1 One person said, when they brought out the shoe and the wig and put those on the witness stand, there was a gasp in the courtroom.

Speaker 1 It was just a moment in this case, I think, that everything turned at that point.

Speaker 1 So Mary said, he made me do things I didn't want to do. I tried to say no.
He'd just do it anyway. They said, did it hurt you? And she said, yes, sir.

Speaker 1 So she said that morning, Matthew started ranting about problems he was having and his personal feelings about the church administration. That's what she says on the stand.

Speaker 1 Now it's not even about her. It's about work.

Speaker 1 I didn't know what set him off. I was just listening to him.
He calmed down. We started the movie.
I fell asleep. This is the night before.
He woke me up. We went to bed.
I remember not sleeping well.

Speaker 1 Brianna woke up crying at 6.15.

Speaker 1 Matthew kicked me out of bed, caught me somewhere in the low of my back, and I was on the floor. She tended to Brianna.
Matthew got angry.

Speaker 1 Matthew tried to suffocate Brianna, covering her nose and mouth. She said he didn't even want her.
He wanted a son, is what she said.

Speaker 1 She said she was terrified, took Brianna away from Matthew. Matthew went back to bed, and she's followed him.
She said, I just wanted to talk to Matthew. I just wanted him to stop being so mean.

Speaker 1 She said, I just wanted to talk to him, though. I went to the bedroom closet and retrieved the shotgun because I wanted to force him to work through our problems.

Speaker 1 I just wanted him to stop being so mean. I didn't pull the trigger, but something went off.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And she said, I heard a loud boom. She kept saying that.
On cross, the prosecutor says, you know that pulling that trigger is what makes it go boom, right? That's what did it. Yeah.
You've seen that.

Speaker 1 She said, yes, sir. And they said, did you pull the trigger? And she said, no, sir.
They said, did you intentionally kill your husband? No, sir. Did you love your husband? Yes, sir.
I still love him.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 he points out her discrepancies. He said, well, why'd you tell Alabama police that Matthew never abused you? Which is it? You've told

Speaker 1 several different people he didn't abuse you and several people he did. So which is it? Was he abusive or not? Mary says, I was ashamed.
I didn't want anyone to know about Matthew.

Speaker 1 And they said, did your husband do anything for which he deserved to die?

Speaker 1 And she said, no, sir. Uh-oh.
And she's saying it was an accident, so she can't say it was intentional.

Speaker 1 The abuse part is to get her holding a shotgun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then her claim is she didn't shoot him on purpose. She took the shotgun because that was the only way they were going to have a conversation that she wanted to have.
Right.

Speaker 1 That's what that's what she was claiming. So, and then once she had the shotgun, it just went off accidentally, and then it's an accident.

Speaker 1 So in the closing arguments here, the prosecutor said he was brutally, premeditatedly, and intentionally killed, shot in the middle of the back as he slept. He did not deserve to die.

Speaker 1 Justice demands one verdict, guilty of murder in the first degree.

Speaker 1 Okay. Defense, both attorneys give a closing.

Speaker 1 C. Ferisi says, unfortunately, Matthew Winkler couldn't practice what he was preaching.
His problems were that of a bully. And what bullies do is they pick on people that are smaller than them.

Speaker 1 If you looked up spousal abuse in the dictionary, you're going to see a picture of of Mary Winkler's face looking back at you.

Speaker 1 Leslie Ballin, I hate when they say look up in the dictionary. I don't know why.
It's just so trite. It's so stupid.
Come up with something else. Why do people still say it?

Speaker 1 It's such a cliche, especially in court.

Speaker 1 Now, Leslie Ballin says, this is a case about two people who had a tumultuous marriage of some 10 years that ended in tragedy. There are no winners.
We're left with the memory of Matthew Winkler.

Speaker 1 Even though there's been a lot of negative things said about him in this trial, there was a good side to him, too.

Speaker 1 So they kind of play good cop, bad cop, the two lawyers, which is a nice way to do that.

Speaker 1 Now, the verdict goes out. There is eight hours of deliberation,

Speaker 1 which is quite a bit. And then they reach a verdict.

Speaker 1 They bring her in.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 there is three options, or four options, I should say. Guilty of first-degree murder.
Sure. Or I'm sorry.
Because then there would be eight options. Okay.

Speaker 1 Seven and seven. So anyway, first-degree murder, second-degree murder, guilty, not guilty, and voluntary manslaughter, guilty, not guilty, or just not guilty.

Speaker 1 So that's a total of seven outcomes here.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 here we go. They find her guilty

Speaker 1 of voluntary manslaughter. Wow.

Speaker 1 Not first, not second. Voluntary manslaughter, which means they believed that the gun just went off when she was pointing it at him for this.
And they believe all the other stuff. Yep.

Speaker 1 Under Tennessee law, voluntary manslaughter is a crime of passion, quote, produced by adequate provocation sufficient to lead a reasonable person to act in an irrational manner. Okay.

Speaker 1 So the defense's reaction to this, they're fucking thrilled. Yeah.
This is a high-profile people from Japan taking pictures of the victory. This is awesome for them.

Speaker 1 She's going to get to see the light of day. Oh, we'll talk about it.

Speaker 1 So Farisi said, we were offered 35 years.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Then we were offered 20 years.
We were offered 15 years.

Speaker 1 Prosecution doesn't happen at all. No.
Now we're just looking at three to six years.

Speaker 1 Yep. My reaction is the verdict was probably just.

Speaker 1 Ballin said there's no winners. We're just left with the memory of Matthew.
He said that again.

Speaker 1 So he said, this is a case about two people who had a tumultuous marriage of some 10 years that ended in tragedy. Nothing good about it.
This is unbelievable.

Speaker 1 But also high-five, because come on, we just pulled off a magic trick. Okay.
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Sentencing comes around now.

Speaker 1 Victim impact statements. They bring in Matthew's brother, who stands up in the stand and stares at Mary and said, I've watched as the life of my brother's been turned into a circus.

Speaker 1 I don't see any remorse in you.

Speaker 1 Matthew's mother gave a 30-minute long monologue, staring at Mary the whole time. 30 minutes.
That is, that's a good set right there.

Speaker 1 It's more than a feature set.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. She has got some minutes.

Speaker 1 She said, you broke your girls' hearts. Mary, you have destroyed your husband's character.
You destroyed his good name. You've accused him of being a monster who abused and belittled you.

Speaker 1 The monster you have painted for the world to see, I don't think that monster existed. There's been no remorse from you.
You've never told your girls you're sorry. Don't you think that

Speaker 1 you at least owe them that? You've never told us you're sorry. I think you at least owe us that.
The girls are having nightmares. They fear people with guns breaking into their house.

Speaker 1 They're terrified. Don't you think you owe them an explanation?

Speaker 1 Now the defense has 10 witnesses testify on her behalf, also tons of letters of recommendation, church friends, family friends, supporters, tons of letters. And Mary reads a statement herself.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Quote, whatever sentence you give me can never punish me enough. I've suffered the loss of someone I loved.
I've lost my freedom. I've lost my children, and I've had my life on public display.

Speaker 1 I think of Matthew every day and the guilt, guilt and I always miss and love him.

Speaker 1 I hope this situation sheds light on unhealthy relationships and that others will find the strength and have the courage to seek help before such a tragedy occurs again.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor argued for the maximum six years in jail.

Speaker 1 Defense attorney said probation should be fine for her. No jail time.

Speaker 1 So the judge says this, quote, this offense meets the state's legal definition of a violent, shocking, and reprehensible act.

Speaker 1 However, in fashioning this sentence, the court has considered the seriousness of the offense, the jury's verdict, and the testimony about allegations of abuse of this defendant.

Speaker 1 You, ma'am, may fuck off three years in prison. God damn.

Speaker 1 How this breaks down is 210 days in prison custody minus 143 days already served, which is five months in jail awaiting trial before she got out, minus 60 days to be served in a mental health facility on the weekends instead of prison.

Speaker 1 Total time she does in jail is seven days. Seven days.

Speaker 1 She does a week in jail and then gets out for the mental health stuff and all that. That's it.
And she's put on probation for the rest of her sentence as well. So then another two years on probation.

Speaker 1 That's that. The defense obviously pretty thrilled about this.
They're jacked over the moon here. Now, the jury foreman is pissed off, and he talks to the press about it.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Bill Berry, the jury foreman,

Speaker 1 gives an interview to court TV. He says, quote, I don't think justice was done.
It's the times we're living in. People are getting away with murder today.

Speaker 1 If only there was a group of people. People who could fucking stop that.

Speaker 1 If only there was a group of, specially assigned group of people set to really figure out the facts of these cases and make sure that doesn't happen. If only stop it, yeah.

Speaker 1 If only someone was in charge of that group of people, maybe a four-person, possibly. Oh, yeah, that's this asshole.

Speaker 1 So he says the jury was unbalanced and unfair. He said it was

Speaker 1 10 women and two men, and they all ganged up on the two men, is what he said. All right.
He said nine of the ten women wanted to acquit Mary entirely, wanted her to walk free.

Speaker 1 They felt like he deserved what he got. They felt like she had already lived through enough prison with the life she lived and that it was justified.
Is that right?

Speaker 1 Barry and the other man, first of all,

Speaker 1 you have to give credit to the generosity of women in this way. There are 10 women and two men, and who's the foreman? A guy.

Speaker 1 They let him be the fucking foreman. They're like, fine.
Maids, probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you do it.

Speaker 1 So they said that they compromised on voluntary manslaughter. It was just a compromise verdict.
He said, we had to settle on something. I didn't want her to just walk.

Speaker 1 He says he didn't believe Mary's abuse claims, doubted the physical abuse, wasn't sure about the sexual abuse, and he thought the sentence, if there was just going to be manslaughter, should have been the maximum six years.

Speaker 1 And he said he thinks she shouldn't get her daughters back

Speaker 1 as well. Now, the public is split here.

Speaker 1 Public is split. Really? Here is from the Tennessean.

Speaker 1 Tennessean newspaper. Okay, here are some.
This is from their, they asked readers to email in their thoughts, and here is what they got. Here's Susan Hines.

Speaker 1 I'm glad she was convicted in this case.

Speaker 1 Even if she was just threatening Matthew with the gun with no intention of harming him, she did not protect her children from the argument by locking the bedroom door. That's what she's pissed about.

Speaker 1 Their eight-year-old daughter came in moments after the shooting, and this alone is unforgivable.

Speaker 1 Concerning her sentence, the jail she will sit in can never punish her like the jail she's had to live inside of herself.

Speaker 1 Her children are gone forever, along with her husband and the secure life she's living. She made a choice that has and will continue to affect a great number of people in a horrific way,

Speaker 1 some for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 1 This is John Salyer of Kentucky. Considering the vast documented sexual, physical, and emotional abuse from her husband over many, many years,

Speaker 1 vast, you can say, but there isn't no documentation of any of this.

Speaker 1 You can't really put that word in there.

Speaker 1 True or not, Mary Winkler should be credited with time served, reunited with her children, and allowed to make the best of her remaining life.

Speaker 1 Here is Terry Hill. Here's another example of a justice system that's biased.
Had it been the other way around, Mary Winkler's husband would have received a first-degree murder verdict.

Speaker 1 Well, we know that's true, but we also know that a wife couldn't be physically and sexually abusing her husband for years either. That'd be very difficult to do.
So it's not an even flip on that one.

Speaker 1 It's definitely apples and oranges. But today, all a woman has to do is claim mental, physical, or sexual abuse, and she'll get a lesser conviction and a possible acquittal.

Speaker 1 Just look at the Scott Peterson trial.

Speaker 1 The man was convicted and sentenced to death on 100% circumstantial evidence. That piece of pizza is enough for me.
I think our justice system is broke. Not broken, broke.

Speaker 1 And women like Mary Winkler need some money, are helping break it.

Speaker 1 Patricia Lewis of Tennessee, this

Speaker 1 verdict is just dot, dot, dot. It was blatantly obvious.
Mary Winkler was a woman who'd been battered emotionally. Her continence radiated abuse.

Speaker 1 I am a healthcare professional, and without exception, all of my peers, one of whom was married to an abusive, dominating minister, quote unquote, of the gospel, agreed that this man was duplicitous, controlling, and demeaning.

Speaker 1 There are no winners here, but hopefully she can be reunited with her children.

Speaker 1 And then finally, Gary Redden, quote, I cannot believe Mary Winkler got off with a slap on the wrist for shooting her husband in the back while he slept. What is wrong in this country?

Speaker 1 No matter, no wonder murderers run rampant when there's no justice for real victims. The murder rate is so far down.
Shut up. Even back then, it was so far down.

Speaker 1 If her crime is excused away because of alleged circumstances,

Speaker 1 well, you just alleged

Speaker 1 circumstances

Speaker 1 a lot. Why isn't Matthew's alleged behavior excused? If the alleged abuse did occur, where's the psychologist to explain away his behavior? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's an interesting devil's advocate type of deal there.

Speaker 1 August 14th, 2007, Mary is released from.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 That is very quickly. Very quick.
She returns to McMinnville,

Speaker 1 goes back to her friends, the Thompsons, and actually goes back to work at the dry cleaning shop. Wow.
Like, well,

Speaker 1 sorry, I had to take a little leave there. Sabbatical.
Sorry, I was gone for a week.

Speaker 1 Little murder, jail, mental institution, sabbatical. You know how that goes.
Oh, boy, oh, boy.

Speaker 1 She's told by the lawyer she'll go back to work real soon. The community completely welcomes her, supports her 100%.

Speaker 1 Everybody is good. By the way, remember her relationship with Daryl, Daryl Pillow?

Speaker 1 After Mary was released, she ended things with Daryl Pillow.

Speaker 1 She saw him all through the time when she was in jail, though.

Speaker 1 Daryl said, quote, she just said, Daryl, I've got to be single right now.

Speaker 1 And I said, that's fine. She needs to be focused on her children, and that's where she's at right now.

Speaker 1 All right, Daryl. At least Daryl seems like a decent guy.

Speaker 1 Then there's a custody battle.

Speaker 1 Since her arrest, her daughters have been living with Dan and Diane Winkler. Oh.
And the Winklers want to keep the kids permanently.

Speaker 1 They don't think that the mother should get the kids back after the mother killed their father. I kind of agree.
So there's a file to terminate Mary's parental rights and adopt the girls.

Speaker 1 Their argument is Mary killed their father. She's unstable.
She lied to the girls about what happened. And the girls are fucking terrified of her and all that shit.
That's what they say.

Speaker 1 They also file a $2 million wrongful death lawsuit against Mary as well. Okay.
That's the other thing. You can say it's voluntary manslaughter all you want.
If it's a wrongful death, which

Speaker 1 is still wrongful.

Speaker 1 Then you can win money. So Mary fights back wanting her daughters back.
Her argument is she's the victim of abuse. She's undergone mental health treatment.

Speaker 1 She's completely rehabilitated and children need their mother. Yes.
Which are also strong arguments.

Speaker 1 So the case goes to court in Jackson, Tennessee. Psychologists evaluate Mary, the children, the parents, the situation, the house.
The battle drags on for over a fucking year. Wow.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, September 2007, the month after she gets out of jail, Mary appears on Oprah.

Speaker 1 What? Oprah, what do you do? She's on Oprah. The Oprah Winfrey Show, which is her first major interview.

Speaker 1 This is September 12th, 2007. Yes.
I'll read this is from the Ann Rule book here.

Speaker 1 Mary hadn't been out of the mental health facility even four weeks when a startling announcement came from the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Speaker 1 As Oprah's new fall season began, Mary was slated to be one of the first week's guests. So she's like a kickoff the week, too.
That sweeps week are the big ones.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 whether Reverend Daniel Winkler and his wife Diane would join the show was a question, but in the end, they declined.

Speaker 1 It was only Mary who met with Oprah, and she was not a live guest on camera, but an image on film as she met privately with Oprah sometime before September 12th, the date the show aired.

Speaker 1 So she wasn't out in front of the audience. It was a...

Speaker 1 Here's the interview I did with her, and they show footage of it here.

Speaker 1 So this was probably one of the oddest interviews Oprah has ever conducted, even though she has questioned thousands of people from movie stars to criminals.

Speaker 1 Having been on the set with Oprah when she talked to Diane Downs, who was with us by satellite in 1985, I believe that was the last time I've seen Oprah so bemused by her subject.

Speaker 1 Mary was in her own world and she didn't let Oprah in.

Speaker 1 Diane Downs, convicted of shooting her three young children two years earlier, denied that she had done so, and her affect was so animated and inappropriately cheerful, she actually enjoyed her moment in the spotlight on Oprah.

Speaker 1 Mary. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that was a weird interview. Her on Oprah's fucking weird, dude.
It's so weird. I mean, Diane Downs' interview.
Everything Diane Downs did was fucking weird. Diane Downs is just very weird.

Speaker 1 She's out of prison, too, isn't she? Oh, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 I sure shit hope not. God damn it.
She killed her kids. There's no excuse for that.

Speaker 1 They didn't abuse her. You can't say, my kids abused me.
They put it in my ass.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 So, Mary Winkler, having admitted shooting her husband, was certainly not animated and seemed hesitant to speak at all.

Speaker 1 Although it could not be more different, her affect was just as peculiar as Diane's.

Speaker 1 Many times during their conversation, Oprah did a subdued double take as she could not believe what she'd just heard, and she did her best to coax some kind of response out of Mary, any kind of response.

Speaker 1 Mary dressed much like she had during the trial, a white cardigan jacket cut like a sweater, a cut like the sweater she wore when she testified.

Speaker 1 Her haircut was the same, and her shy expression, the head-ducking pose, were almost identical to those shown on news clips during her murder trial.

Speaker 1 On Oprah's show, however, Mary rarely, if ever, met Oprah's eyes, instead gazing off to the left, which is weird.

Speaker 1 It was almost as if she existed in another dimension, and the questions, however gently probing, never quite penetrated an invisible wall that she had built around herself.

Speaker 1 From time to time, her response was only a quiet, hmm,

Speaker 1 and was almost cheerful in an absent-minded way.

Speaker 1 For instance, when she had just mentioned how Matthew had suffocated their baby to, quote, put her to sleep, Oprah followed up with something like, What did he do?

Speaker 1 Like, holy shit, her tone reflecting shock. Mary only, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes, Matthew often suffocated their children, and she'd been powerless to stop him.

Speaker 1 Never looking into Oprah's eyes, Mary explained that she'd been terrified of Matthew that morning, but at the same time, she just wanted to talk to him.

Speaker 1 She said, I wanted him to be happy, to stop being mean, just to enjoy life and tell him he didn't have to be so miserable. And Oprah said, have you ever said that to him before?

Speaker 1 And Mary said, he would have never, he never would have allowed me to say that.

Speaker 1 Some of Mary's recitation of the facts of the morning of the shooting tracked with the version presented by the defense at her trial, but others were slightly changed by now.

Speaker 1 Oh, she's got a new event. Now she recalled Matthew had been sitting on the bed.
Months ago, she said he had gone back to bed and was laying down.

Speaker 1 Those are very different things.

Speaker 1 She said, quote, I just wanted to talk to Matthew, she explained to Oprah. And then there was that awful sound.

Speaker 1 Then she, quote, she hurried to a safer subject, but Oprah tugged her back, asking her to explain what that meant. Mary could not bring herself to say the words gunshot or shotgun shells.

Speaker 1 She explained that she never in a million years would have thought there was something in there, meaning shotgun shells. Quote, he always took it out.

Speaker 1 She mentioned, she meant the shotgun shells, but she couldn't say the words. Oprah was like, during anal? Or what are you talking about? Oh, that's.
Where did he take it?

Speaker 1 She showed no emotion at all as she explained that she thought something had hit the ceiling or one of the windows. Instinctively, she had run away and then realized Matthew wasn't chasing her.

Speaker 1 Asked where the girls were at that time, she answered Oprah in a peculiar way. Quote, I want to say they were watching TV.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it was early in the morning and the girls were either either in bed or sitting out in the hall, as Patricia had testified, frightened about what was happening in their parents' room.

Speaker 1 Mary said, quote, I still ask myself, what in the world happened? She had a vague memory of Matthew, quote, laying there, but he didn't say anything.

Speaker 1 She had wiped his mouth because there was blood coming from it and it just kept coming and coming. But she couldn't see anything wrong with him and couldn't understand why he was bleeding.

Speaker 1 She claims.

Speaker 1 And now it was akin to shade coming down over Mary's eyes, although they were still open. Almost to herself, she spoke of how people's appearances can change in a matter of seconds.

Speaker 1 She meant as they died, but she could not say that. She couldn't say that either.
She said, it's just terrible describing how dead faces change. She said, I just took off.
We ran away.

Speaker 1 We didn't go to his parents because they were on vacation. I was going to Memphis, but then she had been aware that she was headed toward Mississippi instead.

Speaker 1 In the same breath that she described her fear of her husband, she said with as much feeling

Speaker 1 with as much feeling as she had mustered so far, I do love him. I do love Matthew.
She told Oprah she could not imagine life without him.

Speaker 1 She said, just before something very bad happened, Mary felt like her life was in danger, but now she's better.

Speaker 1 She said she was only beginning to find out who she really was, describing how frightened she had once been because she broke the sun visor on her car and had been afraid to tell Matthew. Oh.

Speaker 1 God, that sucks. Now she told Oprah that that

Speaker 1 now she saw that it had been her car and that she shouldn't have been afraid over a broken visor.

Speaker 1 It's my car. If I want to break it, I'll break it.

Speaker 1 When Oprah asked about the financial crisis that came out after she bounced some checks in the computer scam aftermath, Mary said she wasn't even upset about it.

Speaker 1 She said she had nothing to do with it. It was all Matthew's idea.

Speaker 1 Which in the beginning, she said she didn't want him to find out. Now she said it was all his idea.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She said, yes, she paid the bills and balanced the checkbook, but it was Matthew who participated in the Nigerian bank scam.

Speaker 1 She told Oprah she wasn't angry or he wasn't angry with her because it was his doing. She knew virtually nothing about the bank problem, she said.

Speaker 1 That jarred with almost everything in the courtroom testimony about Mary's frantic efforts to hide the check kiting.

Speaker 1 There was witnesses talking about her opening other accounts and trying to get ones with him.

Speaker 1 She's not telling the truth there. And still, she might have been trying to do that for the family, but she can't say she didn't know about it.

Speaker 1 Right. She was very well aware.

Speaker 1 She could say Matthew fucked up and I tried to fix it, but you can't say I didn't know what was happening. That's crazy.

Speaker 1 And she still seemed unable to explain what she was afraid of the morning Matthew died.

Speaker 1 Possibly the most painful parts of Oprah's interview with Mary Winkler were the questions about the couple's sex life.

Speaker 1 During her testimony, Mary had been terribly embarrassed about Matthew's insistence on anal sex, but hadn't been disturbed by references to oral sex. Okay, so she'll throw down.

Speaker 1 That's fine. Now she included both in her litany of sexual abuse at Matthew's hands.
She waffled about whether he had struck her physically. Now with Oprah, she wasn't saying he beat me all the time.

Speaker 1 A doubter might say that Mary's excruciatingly long pauses after Oprah's asked a question

Speaker 1 came about because she was trying to remember what she had said earlier. As Mary on film spoke, her attorneys, Leslie Ballin and Steve Farisi, were

Speaker 1 live in Oprah's audience. Farisi's sister was handling Mary's legal struggle to win back the custody of her three daughters.
Will that happen? Should it happen?

Speaker 1 This is a question almost as difficult to answer as the one about her possible motivation for shooting.

Speaker 1 So Oprah said, Tell me what you want. Tell me why you wanted to have this conversation today.
Why did you want to talk to me?

Speaker 1 Which I'm sure she didn't call Oprah, probably. Well, maybe the lawyers did.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Mary said, Up to this point,

Speaker 1 up to my life at this point, she has weird syntax up to my life at this point

Speaker 1 i can't have done all this in vain i cannot sit back if there's anything i could do to help somebody else that's my goal at this time

Speaker 1 oprah says how soon after you married him did the problem start she said i would say two three months just being shocked at the yelling in this different person what surprised you the most mary said the things he would say just one day he may encourage me to be with my family then another day he might say we're never talking to them again right Right.

Speaker 1 They say, were there other examples of him being enraged? And Mary said,

Speaker 1 with the rage against you,

Speaker 1 just a certain thing. See, I can tell you one thing.
What was the reason to begin anything?

Speaker 1 Something upset him, if he's having a bad day, then that's all that, then that was just all there was about it. God, that is hard to read.

Speaker 1 Some weird ways of speaking. The words are like you jumbled up fucking Scrabble tiles and then just picked random ones.
You know what I mean? Spit it out there. It's hard to read.

Speaker 1 Oprah asked about the sex and said, you know, things you considered unnatural. She said, anal sex, oral sex.
He made me watch pornography. He made me wear those shoes and that wig.

Speaker 1 Did you ever try to say to him, I'm not doing this? She said, at that moment, no. But when we were not in the heat of the moment, I would say, I don't like that.
Let's not. And he'd say, okay.

Speaker 1 Then he would get going, and that that was just that.

Speaker 1 Oprah said, so when you got to the closet and got the shotgun because you wanted to talk to him,

Speaker 1 and she said, I just wanted to talk to Matthew. I was so afraid of him.
Oprah said, but why the shotgun? Right.

Speaker 1 And Mary said, I can't tell you an actual memory of a thought. But today, when I think back, it's just being so afraid.

Speaker 1 I don't think if it was, I don't think if it was to intimidate him or just to get his attention. So Oprah says, help me understand.
You went to the closet, got the gun, and then what?

Speaker 1 And Mary said, I remember holding the shotgun, hearing the boom, and then a smell. He asked me why, and I just said I was sorry.
Do you remember pulling the trigger? No.

Speaker 1 Oprah says, that doesn't make sense to me. And I imagine it doesn't make sense to you either.

Speaker 1 And Mary says, I know, I know, rather than, yes, you're right.

Speaker 1 So it's real weird. They said, why do you think you should have your children back? And Mary says, I'm your mother.
Or I'm their mother. And Oprah says, you killed their father.

Speaker 1 And Mary says, I did not want any of this to happen. And Oprah said, do you think you served enough time for this crime?

Speaker 1 And she said, there's no amount of time I think you can put something like, you can put on something like this. No, I was just ready for them to lock the door and throw away the key.

Speaker 1 So August 2008, after a prolonged year-long brattle over custody,

Speaker 1 Mary wins full custody of her three daughters. Get the fuck out of here.
Nope. She picked them up on a Friday in August.
Wow. Her attorney said she was absolutely overjoyed.

Speaker 1 The girls will live with her near McMinnville. The Winklers will retain visitation.
I cannot believe it. Those are some uncomfortable kid exchanges there, boy.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Holy shit.

Speaker 1 2010, Mary is diagnosed with MS, multiple sclerosis, which my stepfather has that. It's terrible.

Speaker 1 She said, I've read everything I can get my hands on, experienced it, and it's just the strangest disease. I don't fully understand it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She sat down and she said, where we rent, the man who bought this property, he bought it for the eight acres for the field.

Speaker 1 And so there's certain places where the fence is down, and the girls will just get out there and will run and enjoy that. Sounds like she's got three golden labs or something.

Speaker 1 They just run in the field and come back and tires them right out. They just curl up by my feet while I'm on the couch and they're just passing right out.
um she says that she um

Speaker 1 she tried to make life as normal as possible but she started having trouble with her hands and feet she said it was such a scary time at one point we thought i had had a stroke just because the disabilities were on the right side of my body but upon further testing because that's not something you go to the emergency room to find out you have ms but when you have such an exasperation it came to it came to that point So they diagnosed her with that.

Speaker 1 She said, I had just been accepted into nursing school that last fall. And then with the MS, I talked to my physical therapist and my occupational therapist.

Speaker 1 And the problem, she said, nursing would not be an occupation to go into because I'm on my feet so much. And also, they have to like lift people.
And you got to be strong as a nurse.

Speaker 1 That's tough stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So she returned here. And

Speaker 1 wow, forced to take time to care for herself, she had to give the kids back to the in-laws a little bit.

Speaker 1 She said, when I had the exasperation with my MS, it was a real hard time. The Winklers were wonderful because the girls had gone for a weekend visit and that turned into three months.

Speaker 1 And so the winklers were just right there for the girls and took great care of them. She says she's getting used to opening pill bottles and giving herself shots.

Speaker 1 She said, it's a safety thing where you have to actually push two things to make it open. Honey, I can't hardly do that with two good hands.

Speaker 1 She said, my right hand and right foot were just completely disabled. I could not use them.
Sometimes with MS, whatever you experience may be permanent. You just don't know.

Speaker 1 So I was very fortunate that I've been able to come back to full capacity.

Speaker 1 She said she's also fortunate and thankful for her friends. And she said, I'm doing really good, appreciating all the, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 She said, whatever reason people have any problem with me, that's fine. Everybody's entitled to their opinion.

Speaker 1 But these girls are treated for who they are, not because of what their mother's done, but because they themselves are unique. They're three very fine young ladies.
Just

Speaker 1 the way she puts sentences together has improved so much since then. Think about it in the Oprah interview.
Yeah. When you can't even read it because those words don't go in the right order.

Speaker 1 Is that from the MS?

Speaker 1 I don't know if this is from that or if this is her, she's mentally more clear now or what it is. But so what really happened? Let's

Speaker 1 what the fuck.

Speaker 1 Mary, Team Mary says abused, snapped, accident or self-defense, deserves a second chance. The other side, no evidence of abuse, no medical records, police records.

Speaker 1 She killed him over money, which doesn't make sense because it's not like she got anything. That doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 The shooting, she racked the shotgun, unplugged the phone, drove away.

Speaker 1 There you go. So

Speaker 1 it's weird because this is not a male-female thing the way it's breaking down. It's not a man-woman thing because Oprah is clearly not on her side.
Right.

Speaker 1 And Oprah was for a long time considered the queen of all women. You know what I mean? Yeah.
She's literally their leader forever. And she didn't buy it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Anne Ruhl, who is, Anne Ruhl does not like her. If you read this fucking book, Anne is not happy about her.
Does not like this Mary at all. But how the fuck do we know?

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? And also,

Speaker 1 I hate to say it

Speaker 1 because I'm not in this world and people get pissed off at me for saying this because I'm not in this world, but

Speaker 1 the image consciousness and the whole thing of being a pastor is such a fucking mind-fucking

Speaker 1 as far as that goes. The image and this and that.
And so, I mean, like,

Speaker 1 I tend to believe when someone says behind closed doors, someone's doing shit like this. I tend to believe it.
How do you say no? Because it makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 So I got to kind of believe, I believe her, but at the same time, I'm like, yeah, but then

Speaker 1 why'd you say it? Like, why'd you you do it? Like, you did it? Why'd you have the kids there? Like, you couldn't wait. It's just a strange.
I don't know what happened.

Speaker 1 It's the strangest fucking thing in the world. I feel bad.

Speaker 1 I feel bad for him, too, because that's fucked up.

Speaker 1 I feel bad for these kids. I mean, it sucks, man.
So 2023, Matt's dad gives a sermon. Oh?

Speaker 1 Yes, and in his sermon, he said, 18 years ago, trauma knocked on the front door of our house and we lost a son.

Speaker 1 I live with that emptiness all the time, and it's been almost two decades, but I remember the sound of his voice. And every time we sit down

Speaker 1 at a Christmas table as a family, there's an empty place for him.

Speaker 1 2025,

Speaker 1 Mary is asked for an interview by ABC News. Oh,

Speaker 1 this is this year. She said, we've moved on.
I'm busy taking care of my three daughters. I don't want to talk.

Speaker 1 And they're full adults. They're 20-something older than 10, 26, 24, and 19.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They're full adults.
One just got like indicted for mail fraud, for a MLM scam. No, no, that didn't happen.
But I mean, Jesus Christ. They've stayed out of the public eye.

Speaker 1 No interviews, no social media presence. Pretty much since 2010 when she gave that MS interview.
She's shut the fuck up and stayed out of everything.

Speaker 1 The town remembers it this way. This is what a local said.
This is awesome. Quote, until the Cars for Kids accident, this was the biggest thing that ever happened here.

Speaker 1 So Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Now you know why we had to cover Cars for Kids. That guy plowed over six kids.
Remember that? So there you go, everybody. That is Selmer, Tennessee.
We'll get through the end real quick here.

Speaker 1 That's Selmer, Tennessee. Hope you liked it.
If you liked that story, first of all, we don't know what the fuck happened, number one.

Speaker 1 So don't yell at us for thinking one thing or the other because we have no thoughts on this. I don't know.
She did something. We don't know.

Speaker 1 So anyway, if you're listening, give us five stars on whatever app you're listening on. It really does help drive the show up the chart.
So thank you for doing that.

Speaker 1 You can also follow us on social media all over the place, on Instagram at Small Town Murder, on Facebook at Small Town Pod. You do that there.

Speaker 1 Follow all of that. You can email us.
You can do whatever the hell you want, but definitely get yourself Patreon. That is the thing.
You're going to want Patreon.

Speaker 1 Anybody $5 a month or above, a cup of coffee, it is.

Speaker 1 You're going to get so much, hundreds of bonus episodes immediately upon subscription. You can binge that you've never heard before.

Speaker 1 Then every other week, you get new ones that come out, one crime and sports and one small town murder, and you get it all. You get it all.
You get everything we got here.

Speaker 1 This week for crime and sports, this is very interesting. You definitely don't have to like sports for this.
We're going to talk about dead bicyclists.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about crazy cycling accidents that have happened and all sorts of dead people. It makes NASCAR look like the safest thing in the world.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 And then for small-town murder, it's Charles Starkweather time.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about this guy who went on a killing spree of 11 people and said, no, it was really a 13-year-old girl that forced me to do it. She's tough, man.
She's tough.

Speaker 1 So there you go. Do that.
That is patreon.com slash crimeinsports. And in addition to all the bonus material that you get, that's worth five bucks alone.

Speaker 1 You're also going to get, on top of all that, you're going to get all the shows we do ad-free as well.

Speaker 1 And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well. Jimmy, line them up.
Hit me with the names of the people who love us so much, but don't mind having their name mispronounced.

Speaker 1 Hit me with them right now. Lay them down.
This is executive producer, Rachel. No, that's Rochelle Gentner.
Kyle Norwig in the UK. He's going to come to the DC show.
Wow. See you there.

Speaker 1 Gary Howard, happy birthday.

Speaker 1 Hey, happy birthday, Gary. Alinia? Montroy? Alinia? Alinia.
Alinia. I don't know.
Alinia?

Speaker 1 Don't look at me.

Speaker 1 Aaron Edge

Speaker 1 and Saul. Angela Gillart, happy birthday.
Katie Houghton Houghton, happy birthday. They're coming to Philly there.
They're Happy from birthday. Katie and her husband are from the UK, also, I believe.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's amazing. People are flying across the ocean to come see our dumb shit.
That's fun. Thank you.

Speaker 1 That always blows my mind.

Speaker 1 Jamie Mutz, maybe Moots. Julie Martinez, Robin Balda, Joe

Speaker 1 Welch lost his mom. And he went to Tortilla Flats, James, and

Speaker 1 spread her ashes. That's nice.
Oh, that's nice. Okay, he was doing it for a lot of people.
Positive stuff. Yeah, we'll get there.

Speaker 1 Liz Vasquez, other producers this week. Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, happy hour fishing on the blue bayou of Lafitte, Louisiana.
Where's Lafitte? Lafitte? Lafite? It's probably Lafitte. Lafitte.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would assume like the wine. Because that's Lafitte is a French wine, so everything in New Orleans is French.
That makes sense. Ryan Bender, Janice Hill, Mima, Teresa Rubino,

Speaker 1 Pazia Kennedy. She put her name Teresa in quotes.
I think Mima is the quotable part. We'll call you Mima if you want.

Speaker 1 Pazia, Pazia, Pazia, Kennedy, Franny McIntyre, Rainbow Preston, Valley Girl, Chris with no last name, Dahlia Grayson, Paleo Gen, Bean with no last name, Corillium locus, I think Coroleum, I don't know, Lindy, Peterson, Jeff Morris.

Speaker 1 Made out of Corillium locus, it's

Speaker 1 impenetrable.

Speaker 1 Impenetrable.

Speaker 1 Adam Heusen, Ariel Marquette, Marquay, Morgan Casey, Tina Amaya, Susan Walsh, Luke Quigley, Scott VP, Stanley Daly, Crystal with no last name, Tessa Rivers, George Asilawash, Silawash, Teresa Deletore, Natalie Rich, Jesse with no last name, Dylan Cook, Carl V, Justin Olson, Kyle Stubbs, Sarah Ashe, Luna Pasdek, Vanessa Jenkins, Robin Wall, Stacey Hafner, Dale with no last name, Jack with no last name, Peanut Butterfly, 75, Chris Daniel, Tyler Pac-Man, Bates with no last name, Renee Neargarten, oh boy.

Speaker 1 Alex Smith, Jess Kennedy, Diggy with no last name, Dana Ellison, probably

Speaker 1 resigned to just listening to podcasts at this point in his life. Leg all broke up.
It's a pleasure to have you, Alex. It's been a long time.
We barely knew you.

Speaker 1 Sorry to offend your Mormon sensibilities, but

Speaker 1 Dana Ellison, Astrid, a.k.a. Sastrid.

Speaker 1 Love you, James. Evidently, you have to say that back now.
There it is. Catherine Nichols, Emily Patterson, Kane, DePesh Girl, Elizabeth Hill, Cameron Kay, Robbie

Speaker 1 W1RCP, Pitts. I don't know what any of that is.
Seth with no last name.

Speaker 1 Susan Grant, Jessica Williams, Jamie Janway, Alyssa with no last name, Hammer Andronicus, Todd Smith, Justin with no last name, A.J. Bork, Burke probably.
William the Wicked, Jay If Tiger,

Speaker 1 Kristen Grimes, Speedcore Dave, Megan Beasley, Krista Jackson, Speedcore. Not hardcore speed.
How fucking badass he is.

Speaker 1 Krista Jackson, Peter Carmichael, BBQ Beans, Shelly Fane, Anthony Fernandez, Kimberly Strebler, Chris Stevens, Philip Dion, Mitchell. Nope, that's Michelle G.

Speaker 1 There was also Michelle B that was in porn. That's probably not the same person.

Speaker 1 It could be. Brendan.

Speaker 1 Brendan Kodrowski. Chris Bedard.
Vettered.

Speaker 1 I love it. Charles Meek.
Charles Meek said that. Natalie Crespo, Trevor Gordon, Alice Crawford, Eric Fowler, Chris Haas,

Speaker 1 Morgan O'Shea, Alyssa D., Bad Mofo Inc., James. They've got a lot of people.
Wow,

Speaker 1 that's good to know.

Speaker 1 Danielle Deadline.

Speaker 1 Bred Savoya, John Perry. You can write all that bad motherfucker shit off.

Speaker 1 Gabriel Stansfield. Don Harmer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, Jessica Marlowe's kid. Jessica Coburn, Chastity.
Chassity, not Chastity. Oh.
Chassity Draughty.

Speaker 1 They fucked your name up, Chassid. It's supposed to be Chastity.
Sorry, your parents did that to you. They missed a T.
Sarah Young, Johnny Diaz, Lindsey Boyd, Rebecca with no last name.

Speaker 1 Mark with no last name. Chris Carr, Eric McMahon, Flapjack Shortstacks, Annie Nair, Jill Hanglin.
Oh, we're getting that Nair money. C.
Gene

Speaker 1 C. Green, 91.
R.D. Zepp, 3.
Jacob with no last name. Katie Olson, Herman Horsehair, Bugfuzz, the third.
Jason Novicek. Wow.
Who was it? Was there a name? Jay Novicek?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the tight end for the second one. Yeah, that's what it was.

Speaker 1 I see Check, and I go basketball.

Speaker 1 Kind of with no last name. Brenna and Matthew Reichscharts, Rickerts, Reicherts, Kelly Rogers, Mike Robinson, Amanda Fredericks, Lord Skull Fucker.

Speaker 1 That's gross.

Speaker 1 High

Speaker 1 see that. Exalted position.

Speaker 1 Crystal Smith, Brennan Till, Jeff with no last name. Amos with Amos.
Amos with no last name. Steve Stevens, L'Oreal Testa, Andrew Glenn, and all of our patrons.
You're the best.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much, everybody.

Speaker 1 You fantastic, wonderful, beautiful people. We fucking love you to death.
So thank you for keeping this show going always.

Speaker 1 If you want to follow us on social media, shut up and givememurder.com as drop-down menus. It'll take you anywhere you need to go.
So go there and see us and keep coming back.

Speaker 1 And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.