Some people, though, saw another side of Matthew. Lori Boyd, the church secretary for part of Matthew’s tenure at Central, worked at the main desk. Matthew’s office was down a narrow hallway. At first, she felt he was extremely nice, but as time went by, she said, he became “mentally and emotionally berating and demanding, and hard to work with.” She felt he looked down on her.
Matthew obviously was not satisfied with her job performance. He’d order her to do certain tasks. When she made excuses, he said, “You will have this done when I say so.”
Lori was also aware of a “strained tension” in the office when Mary dropped by the church. Most of the time, she could not hear the words spoken between the two, but she could hear the sound of a deep rumbling voice echoing up the hall and she thought that it was filled with anger.
Mary frequently brought a fast food lunch to share with Matthew. Lori noticed a number of times that when Mary left the building, her lunch remained untouched on Matthew’s desk. On one occasion, she heard Matthew say, “You’re getting a little larger than you need to be. You don’t need to have this food, Mary.”
Lori was appalled. She confronted Matthew after Mary left. “Those are things I was hoping you wouldn’t say to your wife. You’re a man of God. You are supposed to be a leader of us. And you are supposed to lead by example.”
There was another thing about Matthew that bothered Lori. As with many married working couples, Matthew and Mary’s employment schedules overlapped from time to time. When that happened, Matthew brought Patricia and Allie to the church with him. If he had to leave on business, he locked the two girls in his office. Lori thought that the girls should go downstairs to the day care center to play with children there, or be allowed to roam the offices spending time with her and the pulpit minister. But Matthew justified locking them in by saying, “I want my kids to be safe.”
Jonathan Allen, a member of Matthew’s youth group, had nothing but praise for Matthew in his ministerial role. He did, however, recall Matthew yelling at Mary, but never heard Mary yell back at him. He noticed that Mary always seemed to do everything Matthew told her to do.
Congregant Rudy Thomsen said that his respect for Matthew faded one Sunday. He and his wife Kathy were sitting in the pews waiting for the start of morning worship service when Matthew, Mary and the girls entered the sanctuary. Mary had a black eye. This concerned Rudy enough that he asked Mary about it.
Mary said, “I was horsing around with the girls and one of them jabbed me in the eye with her elbow.”
Rudy was skeptical of her response, but gave her the benefit of the doubt until one day at a church supper. Mary was in the fellowship hall flitting from table to table, smiling and chatting with everyone she met. Then, Matthew entered the room. Mary stopped talking, hung her head and took her seat, Rudy said. From that moment on, he no longer believed Mary’s explanation for her black eye. He wondered just what was going on behind the preacher’s closed doors.
Another person wondering was Paul Pillow, one of the owners of Cleaners Express, a business patronized by Mary. He said that in doing business together, his friendship grew with Mary over time, as it did with many of his regular customers. Although he enjoyed his interactions with her, he said that there was an unsettling nervous ness about Mary. “She always seemed to be looking over her shoulder.”
Mary often brought in the comforter from her bed with blood on it. She blamed her part-poodle, part-Maltese dog for the stain. He told her that she was going to have to keep the dog off of the bed. “Mary, you’re going to wear this thing out cleaning it so much.”
Mary chuckled and Paul laughed along with her. In retrospect, he wondered if there was a more sinister explanation. But at the time, the thought never crossed his mind.
He was privy to one family secret unbecoming of a minister and his wife. Mary was a secret smoker. Matthew dipped and chewed. Mary picked up her cigarettes and Matt’s Skoal at a store where she thought she wouldn’t be recognized.
Another person who didn’t share in the admiration most had for Matthew was Sergeant Jimmy Jones of the Tennessee Highway Patrol. He moved into the neighborhood when his grandmother, a sixty-year resident of Franklin Street, was in poor health.
On August 19, 2003, it appeared that the end was near. Family started gathering at her home. Mary came over to check on his 92-year-old grandmother, as she often did. Later, he was standing outside with some family members, when he noticed Matthew moving in their direction. He thought, at first, that this man of the cloth was coming over to inquire about his grandmother, too. But, as Matthew crossed the street, he appeared upset.
Matthew stepped into the yard, but did not approach the group. He stood at a distance, waving his arms and shouting about the barking of a small dog that was keeping him awake. Jimmy was distressed by Matthew’s behavior at this delicate time. He later nicknamed him “the Tasmanian Devil.” Jimmy’s grandmother passed away the next day.
But Evon and Bob, who saw a lot of the Winklers, never sensed that anything was amiss. Even looking back, they can’t spot a single red flag.
Chapter 13
In March of 2004, Matthew’s plan for the future fizzled out. Despite assurances made to him when he came to McMinnville, he was not promoted to the pulpit minister position. The church elders hired Timothy Parish to fill that vacancy. Matthew was disappointed and angry. He started the hunt for a pastoral position elsewhere in Tennessee.
That summer, an opportunity arose at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer. After an initial interview, the church invited him back for a second one and asked him to bring his wife. The elders talked to the two of them together and liked them both. Matthew’s name made it to the short list for consideration.
Despite Matthew’s bitterness over the recent developments at Central Church of Christ, he and Mary continued to invite members of the church to their children’s parties. For Allie’s fifth birthday in July and Patricia’s seventh in September, church members, young and old, packed their house and spilled out into the yard.
That year, Evon and Bob decided to downsize from their huge, tall Christmas tree to a more manageable table-top model with built-in lights. They gave their old tree and lights to Matthew and Mary. Bob drove it over in the back of his pick-up truck, dropping it on the carport when no one was at home.
A few days before Christmas, Bob and Evon looked out their window to the other side of the street. To their delight, they saw their old tree festooned with lights, on display in the picture window of the Winklers’ home. They spent a lot of time that holiday season pausing to look over at it, reminiscing about Christmases past.
This holiday, the neighbors gave both Patricia and Allie big stuffed dogs. The girls weren’t home when they were delivered, but as soon as they saw Evon and Bob, they ran across the street to thank them for the presents.
The extended Winkler family planned to celebrate Christmas Day in mountain cabins in Gatlinburg. To make it affordable for Matthew and his family, Dan and Diane paid for half the cost of their cabin.
One evening as they sat before a blazing fire playing checkers, Matthew and Mary told the others about Matthew’s adverse reactions to a prescription for tooth pain in Pegram and another caused by a drug for his stomach in McMinnville.
Mary laughed about it, saying, “We sure don’t want to be giving him them anymore.”
Matthew received an offer to serve as pulpit minister from Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee. At last, he was going to have his own congregation. He tendered his resignation at Central Church of Christ and Boyd Christian School. To add to the good news, Mary was pregnant again.
Matthew talked with his fellow school faculty members about the exciting new developments in his life. He pointed to his Nissan Maxima in the parking lot and said, “Well, I’m going to have to trade in my car for a mini-van. It’s finally happened. I’ve become one of those dads,” he laughed.
According to Mary, though, a visit to th
e doctor’s office took away his joyful anticipation. Matthew, Patricia and Allie crowded into the examination room for Mary’s ultra-sound. The results dashed Matthew’s hopes. “The Winklers always had boys. Here I am with girls.”
Mary knew by the way he looked at her that he placed the blame for this predicament on her. She fought off tears.
Evon went to the jewelry store two weeks before the Winklers’ scheduled departure to Selmer and bought a gold ring with a birthstone for each of the two girls. The night before the move, she invited the family over for dinner. They gave the girls the rings and told them to “remember us when you wear them.” They presented Matthew a book of Bible commentary and Mary a night gown and a baby gift. Mary was now eight months pregnant—once again, just in time for a move.
The next day, two trucks sent by Fourth Street Church of Christ pulled up to the Winklers’ house. Movers packed and loaded the family’s possessions. When they pulled out of Franklin Street, one of the trucks towed one of the family cars. Matthew, Mary, the two girls and two dogs climbed into the other car. Before they drove off, Evon stopped them, handing over a bag filled with peanut butter crackers, hunks of cake, and other snacks for the road. She was going to miss those girls.
The Winklers drove southwest, passing through Lynchburg, Tennessee, and its Jack Daniel’s distillery. Then in Fayetteville, they headed due west past the town of McBurg and Chicken Creek Road. All along the drive, they passed one Church of Christ after another—a reminder of the obvious presence of that form of worship in Tennessee.
They went up and down hills, past rolling fields and thick clusters of tall trees. They crossed into Lawrence County and into Lawrenceburg. Just outside of the city limits, they drove past David Crockett State Park, on the land where Crockett once operated a water-powered grist mill, powder mill and distillery.
Then, they zoomed onward to the Tennessee River. Soon after crossing it, they entered McNairy County and headed to their new home in the county seat of Selmer.
Chapter 14
The General Assembly of Tennessee formed McNairy County in 1823 when it cut 560 square miles out of Hardin County to create it. They named the new jurisdiction on the border of Mississippi after Federal Judge John McNairy, appointed to the bench by President George Washington. In 1838, history marked the county with pain, sorrow and national disgrace as one route of the Cherokee Trail of Tears.
When the Civil War ripped the nation apart, McNairy County was marked for disaster. Shiloh, where Union and Confederate soldiers clashed in the second largest battle of the war, was just miles away. Lieutenant Colonel Fielding Hurst, Tennessee-born and McNairy County–raised, led the Union forces on a path of destruction through western Tennessee. In the town of Purdy, he sang songs and prayed while his troops burned down all of the churches and most of the homes. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest wrote: “From Tupelo to Purdy, the country has been laid waste.”
The residents of the town struggled to recover, but the final blow brought an end to their dreams—their fifty-year-old brick courthouse was burned to the ground in 1881. By 1897, Purdy lay in ruins. The county seat moved by the railroad tracks in the recently incorporated town of New South, later renamed “Selma.” However, when the documents were submitted, the applicant spelled the name phonetically, according to the local pronunciation, and the town of Selmer was born.
With its new county seat, McNairy County grew into a thriving area of industrial development dominated by textile plants. But in the 1970s, the factories began closing their doors—either going out of business or moving operations to foreign countries. The economic downturn placed it on the national list of impoverished counties. Its 22,000 predominantly white citizens remained in that condition until 2003 when an upsurge began in the area’s fiscal health.
The annals of crime in McNairy County include the death of United States Post Office Inspector Elbert Lamberth in Stantonville on August 17, 1917. Long before “going postal” crept into the common vernacular, a postal carrier gunned down the inspector in front of the Elam Hotel.
It was another law enforcement official, though, who gained the greater prominence in crime lore for the county. His name was Sheriff Buford Pusser. His exploits inspired a cinematic depiction in the Walking Tall series of movies and a short-lived television show.
The 6'6", 250-pound man attended morticians’ school in Chicago and earned a living wrestling as Buford the Bull—once defeating a grizzly bear.
In 1962, when his father Carl’s health took a turn for the worse, Buford, his new wife and her children from a previous marriage moved back to McNairy County. He entered law enforcement working for his father. When Carl’s medical problems forced him to resign as the town’s police chief, the town council hired Buford to take his place.
It was a wild and wooly era in McNairy County and the adjoining Alcorn County across the Mississippi line. The Dixie Mafia and the State Line Mob ran successful bordellos, gambling dens and bootlegging operations on both sides of the border between the two states. Buford wanted to bring all of that to an end.
To accomplish that goal, he ran for sheriff in 1964. Two weeks after his predecessor, James Dickey, died in an automobile accident, Buford Pusser, at the age of 26, became the youngest sheriff in the history of Tennessee.
He got busy making enemies out of all the vice merchants in the area. In 1965 alone, he destroyed eighty-seven whiskey stills. A lot of people wanted him dead.
At 4:30 A.M. on August 12, 1967, he responded to a disturbance call on the state line. His wife, Pauline, rode with him in what was expected to be a routine call. But a black Cadillac pulled up beside them and a shot rang out. It hit Pauline in the head.
Buford raced away from the vehicle and came to a stop two miles down the road to care for his wife. The black car returned. He came under fire once again—one bullet lodged in Pauline’s head, another hit Buford in the face, literally knocking off the left side of his jaw. Buford fell to the floorboard. Eleven additional bullets riddled his car.
Pauline died that night. But Buford, although disfigured, survived, and stepped into the national consciousness as a great American hero. By the time term limits pushed him out of office in 1970, he’d been shot eight times; knifed seven times; single-handedly fought off six men at once, sending three to jail and three to the hospital; and killed two people in self-defense. The Walking Tall legend was born.
On August 20, 1974, a year after the first movie hit theaters, Buford Pusser faced the media in Memphis at a press conference called to announce that he would play the lead in a new movie titled Buford. He then drove a hundred miles to Adamsville, where he changed clothes and got into his maroon Corvette to drive to the McNairy County Fair. There, he signed autographs and spoke to his 13-year-old daughter, Dawna, who arrived earlier with a family member. He left the fair around midnight.
He raced home alone up Highway 64. Six miles down the road, he lost control of his car and smashed into an embankment and was thrown from the vehicle. Dawna was in the first car on the scene after the accident. She knelt in the dirt by her father’s side, begging him not to die.
The funeral cortege numbered in the thousands, including luminaries Joe Don Baker, Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Even Elvis Presley showed up to pay his respects, but he did not want to steal Buford’s moment of glory, so he waited in the Pusser home during the funeral and sat in his limousine and viewed the interment from a distance. Buford was laid to rest beside his wife Pauline at the Adamsville Cemetery.
As often happens with larger-than-life figures, Buford’s death gave birth to a cottage industry of rumors, conspiracy theories and innuendo.
Many, including Buford’s mother and daughter, believed he was murdered, even though officials ruled his death an accident caused by excessive speed. There were those who claimed he was a player in the vice operations in the county and his crime-fighting was only a thinly disguised attack on his rivals in criminal enterprise. No one, though, has offered an
y proof of this accusation.
A little more than a year after Matthew Winkler’s arrival in McNairy County, his death would draw the country’s attention back to this quiet, rural area. The rumors spawned would again tarnish the reputation of a victim of a violent death. Lines would be drawn, and life in McNairy County would not be the same.
Chapter 15
As pulpit minister, Matthew earned an annual salary of $50,000 and the use of the church parsonage. The Winkler family moved into the three-bedroom brick ranch house, set high on a hill on Mollie Drive. Selmer Elementary, where Patricia and Allie would attend school, was only a couple of blocks away.
Mary’s advanced pregnancy that early February 2005 made unpacking and settling into a new home a difficult and demanding task. It all had to be done while caring for two little girls. Mary, normally very energetic, had to struggle to keep in motion and get things done.
Allie had a hard time adjusting to kindergarten in her new school, and was anxious about being supplanted by the baby whose birth was just a month away. She cried every day in class, prompting the assistant principal, Pam Killingsworth, to schedule a meeting. Since Pam was also a member of Fourth Street Church of Christ, she was doubly pleased when her new pastor and his wife both showed up for the conference and displayed genuine concern for their little girl’s distress.
Not everyone had a good first impression of Matthew Winkler. It took only two weeks until he had a run-in with one of his neighbors. The conflict arose over a 15-year-old rottweiler named Madison.
The dog’s owners, Sharyn and Dan Everitt, lived across the street and two doors down. Since the Everitts’ biological children grew up and left the house, the couple welcomed foster children into their home. In February 2006, they had six of them living there, ages 2 to 13.
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