Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

half smile of relief. She had escaped spending fifty-one years in prison. In fact, she might be locked up for only three to six years. But that wasn’t clear-cut at this moment.
    Circuit Court judge Weber McCraw could, at his discretion, consider alternatives to incarceration. It was possible that she might only get probation. But Mary wouldn’t know what her future held until her sentencing date: May 18. Until then, she would return to McMinnville and her life there, back to working at the dry cleaner’s.
    Public opinion hadn’t changed a great deal during the trial. Now, a little over half of those polled felt the verdict was fair. Others said they thought Mary Winkler had gotten away with murder.
    Whatever her sentence would be on May 18, she would have a long series of obstacles. The Reverend Dan and Dianne Winkler filed a $2 million wrongful death suit against Mary on behalf of Patricia, Allie, and Brianna. They also petitioned to adopt their three granddaughters.
    There could be no happy ending to the Winkler murder case, almost always referred to as “the Preacher’s Wife Murder.” Mary’s sentencing was delayed to June 8, 2007.
    Both Mary herself and Matthew’s family were given the opportunity to speak before Judge McCraw handed down his sentence.
    Matthew’s mother, Diane, had not found forgiveness in her heart, she said. She chastised Mary because she had never apologized to Patricia, Allie, and Brianna for robbing them of their father, saying, “You’ve never told your girls you’re sorry. Don’t you think you at least owe them that?”
    Dianne Winkler said that the girls had nightmares, and that Patricia often sat next to her father’s grave and wept.
    Matthew’s brother Daniel spoke of the pain to his family and to Mary’s family.
    Mary told those in the courtroom that she thought of Matthew every day and would always miss him and love him. She turned to his family and said she was “so sorry this has happened.”
    She said she knew that they were angry with her and assured them that she prayed each night for them that they would find peace.
    Somehow, none of it seemed real.
    Now Judge Weber McCraw spoke. The standard sentencing range for voluntary manslaughter in Tennessee is three to six years in prison, but Judge McCraw had some discretion over the time he deduced Mary should serve.
    He sentenced Mary Winkler to only seven months’ incarceration— 310 days . Ironically, that penciled out to ten days for every year Matthew Winkler had lived. Since Mary had already served five months while she waited for a bail agreement to be worked out, she owed the state of Tennessee just sixty-seven days.
    She was taken into custody after the sentencing on Friday, June 8, and served twelve days in the McNairy County Jail.
    Judge McCraw ordered that she spend the remaining fifty-five days in a mental health facility, and that location was to be kept secret.
    On August 16, 2007, Mary walked out of the still-unnamed mental facility a free woman.
     
    Mary Winkler will be on probation for three years. For the rest of her life, people will remember her and wonder about her. Seven months in jail is a remarkably short sentence for shooting a man, perhaps a sleeping man, in the back.
    Angry comments vied with sympathetic responses as people wrote to the Tennessean, discussing her release, and there is no indication that the heated debate will soon end.
    It may be true that Mary suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. However, it seems unlikely that she still suffered acutely twenty years after the death of her handicapped sister. The most obvious explanation for the final violent act in her marriage is that she had given up little pieces of herself to Matthew’s more powerful personality, bit by bit, over ten years of an increasingly confining marriage. Each time she capitulated, she probably felt frustrated, weak, and a little angry, but as she had learned from the time she was a child, her church said that the husband is the unchallenged person in charge in a marriage. The wife is to be a helpmate and a subordinate.
    It was that way in her parents’ marriage, and it was even more true in her own. Matthew Winkler was not only her husband; he was a minister. Although he never had a chance to defend his reputation, he probably wasn’t nearly as abusive as he was portrayed to be in Mary’s trial. Had she found her self-esteem early in their marriage, he probably would have backed down on his