Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

off his friend’s concern, saying that he had only mixed up his medicine and had a strange reaction.
    “Who gave that explanation?” Farese prodded.
    “Matthew did—but I may have said it as well.”
    “Was he taking medicine at the time?”
    “I don’t know.”
    It was an odd story. Mary testified that Matthew had staggered around and pretended to be “high” or “medicated” when his friend was there, while he had been acting like a “tyrant” when they were alone. She added that she had been very frightened.
    Mary said that Matthew hadn’t really wanted to be a minister at all; he really wanted to be a history teacher. Everything had come to a head in Pegram, and she was glad to leave there.
    Even so, her life had continued to be very hard. Allie, her second daughter, was born five weeks prematurely only four days after they moved to McMinnville. Mary liked their new town, but she worried a lot about Allie. Her lungs weren’t fully developed and she had to be on a “breathing machine” for about a week.
    It was in McMinnville, Mary testified, that she’d gotten up the nerve to ask Matthew for a divorce. “It was just very bad. I [had] asked Matthew to have a divorce, and he absolutely denied it. That would not be allowed.”
    “Why did you want a divorce?” Farese asked.
    “It was just so bad and I just wanted out.”
    “Why was it so bad?”
    “He just can be so mean. I was ‘fat.’ My hair wasn’t right. With the girls—if something went wrong with them, it was my fault. If it rained, it was my fault. I didn’t know when it was coming. I didn’t know what mood he was going to be in. I didn’t know [whether] to relax and have a good day or to be watching every move if he was coming out after something. I just didn’t know.”
    Matthew hadn’t been pleased at the way his career in McMinnville was going, she said. He’d expected to be moved up to the main preaching position after the current minister resigned—but that didn’t happen. Mary testified that Matthew had told her to send an anonymous note to the head minister that suggested he needed medicine for “diarrhea of the mouth.”
    She had done as he said.
    Mary told the jurors that her husband hadn’t hurt her physically until they moved to Selmer in 2005. But that changed in February. “We were arguing about something and he knocked something over and I bent down to pick it up and he kicked me.”
    “Where did he kick you?”
    “In my face.”
    She had been hit on that side of the face a few days earlier by a softball. That didn’t hurt her so much, she said, but being kicked in the face was “excruciating pain.”
    Mary was seven months pregnant with Brianna at the time, and she started to have severe pain in one of her teeth. Her mother-in-law had driven her all the way to her dentist back in Nashville.
    She testified that she hadn’t told anyone about being kicked in the face.
    Steve Farese was adept at bringing out a series of negative events in the Winklers’ marriage. When Mary failed to give details, he pursued that line of questioning until she revealed more.
    Now the defense attorney asked her how she and Matthew had corrected their children. Mary said they got spankings.
    “Did any of the spankings ever get out of hand?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Tell the jury.”
    “Patricia and Allie had got in trouble at some point, and [if] he was having a bad day, then they would just get some of it, too. And then they stayed home from school. Matthew didn’t want anybody to see their legs.”
    “Why?”
    “They were bruised.”
    “Girls love their daddy?”
    “Yes sir.”
    Mary said the girls hadn’t changed how they acted around Matthew, and they weren’t worried when he came home.
    “And how were you acting around him when he came in?”
    “I’d just do anything to help him stay happy.”
    Farese was building up to something, and the gallery leaned forward expectantly when he asked the judge if he might approach his witness. He had a paper bag in his hand, and he asked Mary to open the sack and describe what she saw inside.
    “A shoe and a wig,” she said reluctantly.
    “Show me the shoe that’s in there.”
    She pulled it from the bag, and set it up on a stand near the witness chair. It was a white strappy shoe with a very high heel—at least six inches high—and a four-inch platform sole. Mary ducked her head in shame as she showed it to the curious jury.
    Next, she removed a wig. She answered