Minister's wife confesses to shooting him
The wife of a minister found dead in his home has confessed to shooting him at their church parsonage in Selmer, Tennessee, then fleeing to Alabama, where she was found the following night with their three young daughters, authorities said today.
Mary Winkler told investigators she shot her husband on Wednesday, Selmer Police investigator Roger Rickman said.
“To my knowledge, the children saw nothing,” Rickman said.
Rickman declined to discuss a motive but said Winkler had been “very cooperative”.
She was charged in Tennessee with first-degree murder, and police in Alabama said she had agreed to waive extradition.
Rickman expected her to be returned to Selmer during the weekend.
Winkler was questioned last night and early today after she was spotted leaving a Waffle House restaurant with the children in Alabama.
Matthew Winkler, the 31-year-old minister at Selmer’s Church of Christ, was found dead on Wednesday night in a bedroom of the parsonage.
Church members discovered the body after he missed an evening service and they went searching for him.
Police said the home did not appear to have been broken into, but Winkler’s wife and children – Breanna, on, Mary Alice, six, and Patricia, eight – were gone.
A custody hearing was scheduled for this afternoon in Alabama, where a juvenile court judge will decide whether Matthew Winkler’s parents can take custody of the three children, Orange Beach Assistant Chief of Police Greg Duck said.
The news of the death of the third-generation minister and missing family shocked those who knew him in Selmer, a town of about 4,600 people.
