Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

homes on a rainy Christmas Day to investigate a tragedy. They found an elderly couple there, but the young couple who came to celebrate the holiday was gone.

Veteran Homicide detective Dick Reed and a uniformed officer take measurements at the home of Florence and Bill Borden. Reed and his sergeant, Ivan Beeson, would find themselves on an unexpected ferry ride as they tracked an elusive suspect.

Like any number of men who seek to possess the women in their lives, Terry Ruckelhaus would not allow his teenage girlfriend to leave him. What had begun as a wonderful romance in an island paradise ended in a savage attack on a vulnerable victim.

“Papa” Borden, 83, fought to save his granddaughter, but his opponent was fifty-five years younger than he was. He will always be remembered as a hero to his family and to the police who spent a stormy Christmas Day looking for his killer and, perhaps, yet another victim. The holiday season brings out the best—and sometimes the worst—in people.

THE MINISTER’S WIFE

    In 2006, the Reverend Matthew Winkler and his wife, Mary Carol, lived in this house in Selmer, Tennessee, with their three small daughters. It was the parsonage furnished by the Fourth Street Church of Christ, where Matthew was the youth minister. The Winklers appeared to have a happy marriage. (Credit: Beverly Morrison)

When neither Matthew nor Mary Winkler showed up for evening services at this church, the Fourth Street Church of Christ, on Wednesday, March 22, 2006, church members became concerned. Several men, friends of the Winklers, went to their home. What they found stunned them. (Credit: Beverly Morrison)

The Reverend Matthew Winkler was handsome, charismatic, and well versed in the Bible. He had moved up steadily in the Church of Christ as a youth minister, and looked forward to being the pulpit minister in his own church soon. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Mary Winkler, always the perfect minister’s wife, was very small, soft-spoken, and seemed to be in shock when police located her in Orange Beach, Alabama, where she had taken her three daughters for one last “happy time.” (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Patricia and Allie Winkler leaving their father’s funeral with flowers for remembrance. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Mary Winkler, holding hands with her defense attorneys, is arraigned and charged with the murder of her husband in March 2006. She looked like a terrified child in her orange jail uniform. Church members and townspeople alike wondered what could have happened in the Winkler household a few days before. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Steve Farese Sr. (left) and Leslie Ballin, one of American’s “dream teams” of criminal defense, stepped forward to represent Mary Winkler. She clung to them and depended on them as her trial for her husband’s murder lay ahead. (Credit: Beverly Morrison)

In August 2006 Mary Winkler was released on bail. Her father hugs her as Attorney Steve Farese looks on. Mary lived with friends in McMinnville, Tennessee, and worked at a dry cleaning business while she waited for trial. Like most trials, there were delays. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Mary at work at her job in the dry cleaning business in the fall of 2006. Her three daughters were living with their paternal grandparents. On New Year’s Eve, someone with a camera phone took her picture as she sat at a bar, and every area media outlet carried it on the evening news. Some viewers were scandalized. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Mary Winkler walks through a gauntlet of media cameras and reporters to the McNairy County Justice Complex on April 9, 2007. Opinion polls showed that locals were split almost fifty-fifty about whether she should be convicted in the murder of her minister husband or freed. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Assistant District Attorney General Walt Freeland (left) shakes hands with defense counsel Steven Farese. They faced a long and difficult legal battle in McNairy County as the Winkler case unfolded. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

McNairy County Circuit Court judge Weber McCraw listens to a sidebar discussion with the prosecutors. In a trial fraught with emotion, McCraw was a calming and authoritative presence. When he meted out Mary’s sentence, many people were shocked. (Credit: Russell Ingle Photography)

Corporal Stan Stabler of the Alabama Bureau of Investigation shows the Winkler jury the shotgun that