“I appreciate you calling me about this,” Mary replied. “I’ll check with First State Bank. I’m in a classroom right now and can’t talk.”
When Mary didn’t call back to continue the conversation, Amy phoned her again.
“I can talk now, the children are resting,” Mary said.
Amy told her, “There are no funds for the three checks you wrote on First State. It is illegal to make those deposits in our bank. You need to come in and talk to the bank manager.”
“Thank you for calling,” Mary said.
“Come in and talk to the bank manager about the overdrawn account and it can be handled,” Amy insisted.
Mary did not respond.
After a pause, the banker continued. “If you are not able to come in, it will be turned over to the security department.”
“Thank you for calling,” Mary said again.
The next Regions Bank employee to call was Jana Hawkins. “Ms. Winkler, your account is overdrawn by nearly five thousand dollars.”
“I’m aware of that,” Mary said. “What are my options? Can I take my husband’s name off of that account?”
“No. You can’t remove a name from an overdrawn account. But if you come in tomorrow morning at eight-thirty, we can arrange for a five-thousand-dollar loan to take care of the problem with the overdraft.”
“I know I’ve made a bad situation worse, but I can’t fit five thousand dollars into my budget. I want to meet with y’all tomorrow, but I’m in class right now. I’ll have to call you back later.”
The school day ended at 3 P.M. Patricia stayed after school for an extracurricular activity. Mary drove off with Allie to pick up Breanna from the sitter. As she drove past the park, she saw Matthew walking Lady, the Great Dane.
She went home and called Regions Bank at 4:15. Paulette Guest answered the phone and explained to Mary, “We’ve been calling you because of the check you wanted to deposit. We can’t do it.”
“Why not?” Mary asked.
“Because there’s no money behind those checks. We talked to First State, and they’ve already returned the first check, so we know there’s no need to deposit the latest one. Your bank account here has been frozen. You need to come down and see about this.”
“Frozen?” Mary asked.
“Yes. No money can be deposited or withdrawn until you come in and work this out.”
“Why is it frozen?”
“Because, Ms. Winkler, you have been kiting checks, and that is a criminal offense.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If the bank doesn’t get this worked out—and I’m sure if you come in, we can—but if you don’t come in and see about this, there could be criminal charges for doing something like that. We need to see you tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.”
“And you need to come to the bank with your husband. Both of you have to be here.”
Mary made no response to that demand.
After Matthew returned home, Mary headed out again. First, she drove to Selmer Elementary for Patricia. They rented a couple of videos and then picked up dinner at Pizza Hut before returning home.
The family ate pizza, gathering around the television to watch one of the rented movies, Chicken Little, together. Between 8 and 9, Matthew and Mary got the girls cleaned up and tucked into bed.
When the girls were asleep, Matt’s griping began. Mary had at least two stories about this discussion. One was that he was ranting about his hurt feelings concerning some action taken by the church administration. She said that she listened to him vent until he got it out of his system. The other version was that he was angry about the banking situation and her inability to handle the finances correctly. She said that she told him he had to go to the bank with her in the morning and he refused, saying that she had to keep him out of that mess.
Whatever topic generated Matthew’s distress, he eventually calmed down, and he and Mary sat down to watch a movie. In the middle of it, Mary fell asleep. When it was over, Matt woke her up and they went to bed.
Mary didn’t understand why, but she knew she felt very uneasy that night. Her sleep was fitful. She awoke over and over, and it was difficult getting back to sleep each time. When the alarm shrilled the next morning, she was exhausted.
The Downfall
“Unto the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’”
—Genesis 3:16
Chapter 19
The alarm clock went off at 6:15 and the distant wail of the baby penetrated Matthew’s fog of sleep. He hated it when his rest was disturbed by crying and he was annoyed that the baby monitor was turned off. He placed a foot on Mary’s rump and shoved. “Shut her up. This is ridiculous,” he growled.
Mary tumbled out of bed from the force of the push and headed for the bedroom door, but she wasn’t moving fast enough for Matthew. He sprang up and hurried down the hall ahead of her.
By the time Mary reached Breanna’s room, Matt was leaning over the crib. His thumb and forefinger pinched the baby’s nostrils together; the rest of his hand covered her mouth.
“Stop it, Matthew. You can’t do this to her, she has problems. Can I have her?” Mary demanded.
Matthew threw his hands up in the air and said, “I’m tired of it.” He slammed his open palm against the door frame as he left the room. He grumbled and muttered as he stomped back down the hall and collapsed on the bed.
Mary cuddled Breanna, stroking her back, murmuring soothing words into her ear and rocking her gently. She changed her diaper and slid a pacifier into her mouth. The crying stopped, the baby’s breathing pattern changed and Mary knew she was asleep. She eased her back into the crib, covered her and left the room.
Mary was angry. She went into the kitchen and started preparing coffee, then stopped. She was upset about the method Matthew used to quiet the baby. She called it suffocation, and she’d seen him do it to the other girls. But Breanna had respiratory problems, and Mary knew it was especially dangerous to do it to her. It had to stop. The cruelty had to stop now.
Mary walked through the doorway to the master bedroom, past the closet, up to the door of the bathroom on Matthew’s side of the king-size, barley-twist poster bed. “I want to talk.”
Matthew snuggled deeper into the covers.
“I want to talk now, Matthew.”
He didn’t even flutter his eyes in response.
Mary spun around, went to the closet and grabbed the Remington 870 Express shotgun off the shelf. She went to her side of the bed and planted her feet in the pile of decorative pillows lying on the floor. She pointed the shotgun in Matthew’s direction. “I want to talk,” she repeated.
Matthew did not respond. Not a word or a movement. Not even a grunt in acknowledgment of her presence.
Mary pulled the trigger. The noise of the blast shocked her. The acrid scent of gunpowder tickled her nose. Matthew rolled off the bed and sprawled on the floor. The reality of what just happened stunned Mary. She headed for the door.
Across the hall, the firing of the shotgun awoke Patricia. She did not recognize the sound and in her sleep, it blurred with the memory of the noise her daddy made the time he fell to the floor, knocking over the night stand. She got up and headed for her parents’ room.
Mary reached the foot of the bed and saw Patricia in the doorway.
Patricia saw her father on the floor. She heard him gasp, “Call 9-1-1.”
Mary closed the distance between herself and her child. “Stay out there, Patricia,” she said as she shut the door.
Mary knelt by Matthew’s side. Blood oozed from his mouth. She grabbed the edge of a sheet and wiped the blood away.
“Why?” Matthew asked as the blood continued to pool in his mouth and trickle past his lips.
Mary wiped his mouth again. “I’m sorry. I love you,” was all she said. She disconnect
ed the phone from the wall, set it on the floor beyond Matthew’s reach and then disconnected the receiver.
She left the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind her, and faced Patricia and Allie, who had since gotten up and joined her sister. “We have to leave and go far away. A bad man hurt Daddy. We need to go before he hurts us, too.”
“Daddy said call 9-1-1,” Patricia reminded her.
“I did. I did,” Mary lied. “We can’t wait. We need to go now. Go get in the car while I get the baby.” Mary went into the third bedroom, grabbed Breanna and a pair of the baby’s socks. She went out the back door to the carport and strapped the three little girls into the mini-van.
She darted back into the house and snatched up the shotgun, stuffed it in its brown carrying bag and zipped it shut. She didn’t spare another glance for Matthew. She left the bedroom door open as she raced down the hall. Concealing the gun from the girls, she locked the back door and stowed the murder weapon in the rear of the van.
She backed out of the carport, headed down the driveway and out of town. Inside her home, her husband, the father of her three children, slowly bled to death on the floor of the room where she once shared his bed.
Chapter 20
Mary fled her home with no idea of her ultimate destination. Her first thought was to take the girls to Matthew’s parents, Dan and Diane Winkler, where she knew her daughters would be safe. Then she remembered that her in-laws were on vacation.
She thought about going to Memphis to await the Winklers’ return to Huntingdon, but she’d never been to that city and didn’t know her way around. Instead, she crossed the state line into Mississippi and continued heading south. The compulsion to keep moving dominated her decision-making. She kept driving until she was forced to stop for gas near Jackson.
While she filled the tank, Allie spotted the shotgun in the back of the minivan. “Mommy, why did you bring Daddy’s gun?” she asked.
“In case the bad guy that hurt your daddy tries to hurt us,” Mary said.
The children were restless after four-and-a-half hours in the car, and Mary needed time to think about what to do next. All she wanted to do was spend the last days with her girls having fun. Before “the bad days” arrived, she wanted to fill their minds and hers with happy memories.
At times, she could not believe what had occurred that morning in her bedroom. At others, the roar of the shotgun and sight of her husband’s bloody mouth played in a stark, continuous loop. Through this mixed state of denial and acceptance, she looked for a hotel with an indoor swimming pool to entertain her children. She spotted a billboard advertising one, but when she stopped, they had no vacancies. The clerk at the counter gave her directions to the Fairfield Inn.
After checking in, she took the girls to Wal-Mart and bought them swimming suits and a change of clothes. While she played with them in the hotel pool, she thought about where they would all go tomorrow. The first place that came to mind was Baton Rouge. She knew the streets there, but had no idea what she’d find. She knew that Hurricane Katrina left a lot of devastation in Louisiana. Would things still be chaotic in that city? Would there be anything to do with the girls?
Then she remembered the many times that Matthew promised Patricia and Allie a trip to the beach. Patricia had been once when they lived in Baton Rouge, but was too young then to remember it now. Matthew always intended to take them, but each time some work- or family-related problem interfered and the promise was never fulfilled. That was the perfect solution. She’d take the girls to the beach.
When they returned to their hotel room, her daughters were full of questions about Daddy. Mary deflected their inquiries with a litany of comforting words. They went out and picked up dinner, but Mary was too uptight to eat. She grabbed a bag of popcorn on the way back to the Fairfield. She nibbled on it that night to quiet her sour stomach, but even that was difficult to get down. Mary disconnected the phone cord from the wall jack. That made it impossible for Patricia to make a phone call while Mary was busy getting the baby ready for bed.
Meanwhile, back in Selmer, Regions Bank had closed for the day. The bankers there were not pleased with Mary Winkler. Checks came in and were returned marked “insufficient funds.” Since the Winklers missed their scheduled meeting that morning, they bankers now began considering their legal options.
The next morning, Mary pulled out her cell phone and checked for messages. There were several from the church looking for her and her children. She knew time was running out. She listened to a voicemail from her father. She wanted to reach through the phone and rip his head off. She didn’t want to hear from him. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to see him.
She put her cell away without returning any of the calls. She ignored the pleas from the many anxious callers who were worried about the safety of her little girls.
When she hung up, Patricia asked, “Are we going home to Daddy, now?”
“No,” Mary said. “Daddy called and left a message. He said he’s resting at the hospital and wants us to stay away another night so we can all come home at the same time.”
Mary packed up her girls and the new purchases, and hit the road, heading for the Gulf Coast. She took Highway 49 out of Jackson heading southeast. Just past Hattiesburg, she turned onto Route 98 and crossed the state line into Alabama. When she hit Mobile, they stopped for lunch. Mary still had no appetite, but she made sure the girls were fed. She took Interstate 10 across Mobile Bay, then left the interstate heading south, arriving in Orange Beach about an hour later.
Alabama’s small sliver of coastline, with thirty-two miles of beach lapped by the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico, is squeezed in between Mississippi and Florida. The city of Orange Beach gets lots of tourist dollars, but rarely makes headlines.
2006 was not a typical year. Before the end of March, notoriety had struck twice. Mayor Steve Russo became the target of state and federal investigations and indictments into bribery, failure to disclose conflicts of interest and ethics and election law violations. Then he topped that off by getting busted for possession of marijuana. He resigned two months earlier, in January.
For a couple of months, peace reigned in the coastal town until another unsavory event drew the media’s attention to Orange Beach. This time, the scope of the coverage was national. Mary Winkler chose to vacation on their shores after shooting her husband in the back.
She selected beachfront accommodations with incredible views of the gulf at Sleep Inn, a six-floor hotel with 117 rooms accessed by interior corridors. She and the girls checked into their fourth-floor room on the afternoon of March 23.
They went shopping, this time at the Dollar General store where she purchased more clothing and swim floaties. They played in the sand on the beach and splashed in the swimming pool. Then Mary loaded up her daughters in the mini-van and headed to the Waffle House for dinner. She never made it.
Mary thought it had been a great day. The next morning, she planned to hit the road and head back to Tennessee. She’d deliver the girls to Matthew’s parents. And then? She simply did not know what would happen next. She did know that she’d done something wrong and there’d be a big price to pay for her actions. The most painful part was her awareness that, because of what she did, she might never see her girls again.
Still, she experienced a moment of surprise when she saw flashing red and blue lights in her rear-view mirror. That feeling was quickly replaced by resignation. She knew why she was being stopped. She knew her time had come. She regretted being caught so far from home, but there was nothing she could do about that now.
They might lock her up for life. Keep her girls away from her forever. Turn them against her. But there was one thing no one could ever touch. She would always have the memories of her daughters’ happy smiles and exuberant laughter during this odd but comforting trip to the beach.
Chapter 21
The next two days for Mary Winkler alternated between hours of intensity, at the foc
us of law enforcement, judges and her in-laws, and hours of boredom as she sat alone with nothing to do but stare at blank walls. Questioned by authorities, she admitted to her role in the death of her husband. She signed custody of her three girls over to her in-laws. She waived her right to fight extradition to Tennessee and then made the long drive back to Selmer in the company of Sheriff Rick Roten and Officer Byron Maxedon.
When church member Dorothy Weatherford heard about Mary’s imminent return, she went to the McNairy County Justice Center and got the list of items that prisoners are allowed to have behind bars. She carried it to Wal-Mart, since, by jail rules, everything had to be new and in its original packaging. She picked up socks, underwear, a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant and other assorted toiletries. She returned to the jail hoping to drop them off, but couldn’t, as Mary had not yet arrived at the facility. Later that day, Dorothy’s daughter called after seeing video of Mary’s arrival on the news. Dorothy returned to the jail with her package. Since Mary was allowed to have two books in her possession in her cell, Dorothy included a Bible inscribed with “From the ladies at 4th Street Church,” and a book of devotions.
Dorothy was the first to bring supplies to Mary Winkler, but she certainly wasn’t the last. Over the course of Mary’s incarceration, the church members were so generous, they brought in more than Mary could use, and the excess items were passed out to other prisoners.
Attorney Steve Farese of Corinth, Mississippi, received a phone call from a friend explaining Mary’s plight and her inability to afford a good attorney. As soon as he got word of Mary’s arrival in Selmer, he made the short drive from his home to the McNairy County Justice Center.
He sat down across from Mary and introduced himself. At rest, with gray hair surrounding unremarkable features, his was the kind of face forgotten the moment he was out of sight. But when he began to talk, his features livened with emotion and Mary could see his concern for her glowing in his eyes. He saw vulnerability in her down turned head and little-girl face, he heard it in her soft, childlike voice. He promised he would do everything he could to defend her against the charges, and she believed every word he said. He vowed to return on Monday and she knew he would.
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