Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

and balance their bank accounts. In the fall of 2005, Mary had fallen behind, and she was ripe for a phony come-on that offered her more money than she had ever imagined. The offer that arrived in the Winklers’ e-mail didn’t come from Nigeria; it came from Canada.
    All Mary had to do was to serve as a middleman to collect payment for oil deals. She quickly sent her name, address, bank account numbers, and then checks for several thousand dollars in transfer fees.
    Beginning in October 2005, Mary Winkler received checks totaling over $17,000, and she deposited them at once. Of course, the Canadian checks bounced. However, her own checks for “transfer expenses,” which would eventually overdraw the Winklers’ bank account by more than $5,000, had already been mailed.
    If Mary thought she was in trouble over finances before, she was probably worried sick on Tuesday evening, March 21, 2006. Up to that point she had managed to cover her losses by running from bank to bank, but now it was all tumbling down on her.
    It’s likely that Mary and Matthew had an argument over their finances that night. Whether she told him that their bank had issued an ultimatum saying they must both come in for a meeting the next day, no one really knows. It’s doubtful that Mary confessed the enormity of the problem that arose when the foreign checks bounced.
    She would have had no resources to make up the $5,000 overdraft. Check kiting was a felony, and Mary might even face arrest, a trial, and jail time.
    Such a scandal would, of course, damage Matthew’s reputation, too, and a minister’s reputation is paramount to his success.
    But on March 22, 2006, Mary Winkler was expected in her banker’s office, along with her husband, to explain why she was overdrawn. This would account for her behavior at the Selmer Elementary School on March 21, when she was on her cell phone so often, appearing distraught and close to tears.
    Mary Winkler was backed into a corner. Writing a fraudulent check was certainly not what was to be expected of a Southern preacher’s wife. Already, according to Mary, Matthew had come to disapprove of almost everything she did. He didn’t like the way she talked, or the way she walked, or ate, or fell asleep when they were watching movies on television. He told her she was too fat, she said, and insisted that she diet, sometimes even telling her she should skip a meal while he took extra portions.
    What on earth would he do when he found out that she was overdrawn at the bank?
    Five thousand dollars overdrawn.
     
    When Mary was arrested in Orange Beach, Alabama, she didn’t tell anyone about her financial crisis; that paled beside her current situation. She was in far more trouble than she had been a day and a half earlier. Matthew would never worry about his public image again, and Mary was headed for jail back in McNairy County.
    A lot of wives struggling to keep up with what their husbands and community expect of them might empathize with Mary’s predicament over money. Very, very few of them would shoot their husbands in the back.
    There had to be more to the story. Mary had insisted to Stan Stabler and Steve Stuesher that she loved her husband. Indeed, she had gone even further and insisted that she didn’t want his image smeared by the newspapers and television. She seemed more anxious to protect him than to save herself.
    Still, in order for Mary Winkler to avoid spending life in prison, cut off from her three precious daughters, she would almost certainly have to have had more reason to shoot Matthew than the revelation that she had written NSF checks.
     
    Mary had told authorities that she had only wanted a few precious days with her children, and that she’d planned to return to Tennessee and give Patricia, Allie, and Brianna to her in-laws. If she hadn’t been arrested in Orange Beach, she may well have done that. She didn’t have enough money to start a new life somewhere far away, and she certainly didn’t have any in the bank. When she fled to Alabama, she had had her wits about her enough to take cash with her. Although she packed only baby socks, she had a few hundred dollars with her. She still had $123 left when she was arrested. She could have taken more, but she’d left behind Matthew’s money clip on the bedroom dresser, and it was full of bills.
    On Saturday morning, March 25, Baldwin County, Alabama, authorities released Mary Winkler to the custody of McNairy County sheriff