The Pastor's Wife (5 page)

After their visit with Mary, Dan and Diane Winkler followed representatives from social services to the foster home where the three girls spent the previous night. They hugged and kissed their granddaughters, gave vague answers to their questions and assured them that they were loved.

They all traveled to the courthouse in Foley, Alabama, for a hearing before a juvenile judge. Baldwin County officials transported Mary to the hearing as well, where she indicated her approval of her in-laws as guardians of her daughters. Dan and Diane spoke to her again, telling her once more that they loved her. The judge awarded custody of the children to the grandparents.

Upon leaving court, Dan spoke to the media, thanking supporters for their prayers. “Now we want to turn our attention to remembering our son and to the care of three young children.”

 

In Selmer, members of the police department parked their vehicle in the lot behind the Fourth Street Church of Christ. They emerged from the building carrying a computer tower.

 

Authorities transported Mary from the courthouse to the Baldwin County Corrections Center in the county seat of Bay Minette, Alabama, more than an hour's drive away, the coastal town where police took her into custody.

Back in Orange Beach, TBI Agent Chris Carpenter searched through the passenger area of Mary's mini-van. Special Agent Brent Booth went through the contents of the rear compartment looking for any relevant evidence. He spotted an orange tackle box, but did not open it or confiscate it.

The Winklers spent the night in a hotel with their granddaughters. They were joined by both of their sons, and friends Eddie and Sheryl Thompson. They had the hard task of telling the two older girls that their father had passed away.

“Patricia, something terrible's happened to your daddy.”

“I know someone hurt him,” she said.

Then, they delivered the news that she would never see him alive again. They repeated the heart-wrenching scene with Allie. Breanna was too young to know or understand.

In the morning, the authorities released Mary's mini-van to the Winklers, who used it to make the long drive with the three girls to their home in Huntingdon. Their granddaughters behaved beautifully. The only unpleasant incident was when Patricia had a bout of car sickness. At one meal stop, a stranger recognized them and paid for their food. They arrived home very late, but Matthew's Aunt Linda and his maternal grandmother were there to greet them.

The girls were fearful and full of questions. Aunt Linda held her two great-nieces tightly to her side as they sobbed out the worries. They wanted someone they knew with them at all times—preferably Nana and Poppa. Lights had to be left on at night, or they were too afraid to sleep.

In Selmer, church members gathered to plant annuals in honor of their fallen minister on Saturday, pausing to share memories of him. Before his death, Matthew planned a spring clean-up of the church grounds that included planting flower beds. “We're doing this because Matthew wanted us to,” James Turner said.

Retired psychiatric nurse Jimmie Smith said, “It keeps
us busy. We don't understand all of this, but God's with us, and we're working for Him, planting His flowers.” Then she was back digging in the dirt.

In Bay Minette, Mary waived her right to an extradition hearing, clearing the way for her transfer back to Tennessee. Saturday morning, Baldwin County sheriff's deputies outfitted Mary with handcuffs, a belly chain and shackles. She climbed into the back seat of the McNairy County vehicle. Sheriff Rick Roten and Officer Byron Maxedon of the Selmer Police Department made the trip back to Tennessee with her.

Mary asked no questions and made no comments. She only spoke when asked if she needed a restroom break or if she was hungry or thirsty. At one of the two stops for gas, Mary was escorted to the service station lavatory. She went inside alone while Maxedon stood guard outside the door.

They pulled up to the back of the McNairy County Justice Center at the jail entrance around 4:30 that afternoon. She entered still wearing the pink sweat suit she had on when she was stopped by the Orange Beach police two days earlier.

The sheriff spoke briefly to the gathered media. “She's fine. She had no emotion whatsoever. She was quiet and cooperative,” he said. “She didn't ask any questions, didn't talk about anything. She had good behavior. We've had no problems whatsoever.”

Officials walked her through the standard booking procedures. She was fingerprinted, photographed and searched by a female guard, and placed in a holding cell alone for eight to ten hours. There she dressed in a prison uniform before being transferred to a cell in the female block.

Mary Winkler, preacher's wife, mother of three, college student, was now an inmate charged with first-degree murder of the man she claimed she loved.

No one saw it coming. Nothing in Mary Winkler's history foreshadowed this horrendous event—the ultimate act of domestic violence. No one ever looked at Mary and believed she was capable of taking another person's life.

Clark Freeman and Mary Nell Hackney married on July 20, 1968. More than five years later, on December 10, 1973, Mary Nell gave birth to their first child, Mary Carol Freeman, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

At the time of Mary's birth, Knoxville was home to approximately 175,000 people, making it the third-largest city in the state.

Knoxville is situated in eastern Tennessee, in former Cherokee country, embraced by the Cumberland Plateau of the Appalachian mountain chain on one side and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the other. Growing up, Mary often visited the park and explored the 510,030 acres of ridges, hollows, river gorges, the most diversified plant life in the country and the largest stand of virgin timber east of the Mississippi, authorized by the federal government in 1934 and dedicated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940.

The city began its life as a fort named after George Washington's secretary of war, Henry Knox. That structure still stands in the central business district of the city. In 1796, when Tennessee became a state, Knoxville was its first capital.

The Freeman lifestyle owed a lot to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a New Deal project under Franklin Roosevelt's administration, that transformed the Tennessee River and brought modern conveniences to the city. The program, beginning in 1933, built large dams, and purchased smaller existing private dams, and created a network of fifty that operated as a single system, generating power and enhancing the region's economic development. The Tennessee Valley Authority is still one of the two largest employers in Knoxville. The other is the University of Tennessee.

This institution of higher education began in 1794 as Blount College and gained its current status in 1879. It now leads a statewide university system that is a pivotal part of the Knoxville community, serving as a national leader in energy research and the cultural center of the city as well as providing a nationally recognized athletic program closely followed by local citizens.

After World War II, Knoxville felt the impact of the United States government again when the village of Oak Ridge—twenty miles west of the city—became the site of the Manhattan Project, a secret federal nuclear installation. The city benefited from another federal project in the fifties—the development of the interstate highway system during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. The city lies on U.S. Route 40, the long and winding highway that connects Wilmington, North Carolina, on the east coast, to Barstow, California, in the west. All these government programs boosted the economic growth of Knoxville, which positively impacted the standard of living enjoyed by Freeman family decades later.

Knoxville is a place of unquestionable beauty. The great debate is whether the most glorious season is spring or fall. The blooming of a great profusion of dogwoods and azaleas announces the arrival of the warm weather with a breathtaking display of whites and reds, highlighted by the intense, fresh green of new growth. Every autumn, the brilliance of the golds and reds racing down streets
and over mountaintops make the area glow like an exquisite work of art.

Mary grew up on Frontier Trail in a predominately white, modestly affluent neighborhood in southwest Knoxville. Her family attended the Laurel Church of Christ, a 200-family congregation known for its ministry at the University of Tennessee. Her father Clark served as deacon. They lived the life dictated by the guidelines and prohibitions of the Church. The man was the literal head of the household in every way. Clark's word was law. He made all the decisions for his family.

When Mary was 2 years old, her sister Patricia was born. Patricia's life did not get off to an easy start. She was born with cerebral palsy and developed spinal meningitis and encephalitis as an infant. She suffered from significant mental retardation and physical disability. Eventually, she was capable of reading words off of a page, but she had no comprehension of the meaning behind them.

Mary was close to and very protective of her little sister. Even though Mary had a room of her own, she usually slept in Patricia's bed with her. She put a pillow between them to keep from being banged up in her sleep by the metal braces Patricia often had to wear.

Mary attended Mount Olive Elementary School. At home she had a strict upbringing, where rules were made to be followed without question. She learned to mind her manners and respect her elders. She was a quiet and obedient child—reserved and soft-spoken, just like her mother.

When Mary was in middle school, her parents took in a child named Shannon as a foster daughter. Shannon's four siblings were spread out in other homes. When the Freemans submitted a request to serve as foster parents for all five of them, they were denied. The state insisted that each child have his own bedroom.

Mary offered to sleep on the sofa and give up hers, since there were no rules requiring a biological child to have her own space. Instead, Clark Freeman, a home improvement contractor by trade, built an addition to his home. He hoped
that all of the kids could live with his family—but, if that still wasn't the case, at least the siblings would have a place to come together for visits on weekends and holidays.

By the time Clark finished the project, the five children were re united with their biological parents. Once again, the Freemans were a family of four. Clark bought homes from individuals and from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, renovated them and sold them. He earned his living “flipping houses.” Mary Nell was a teacher for the Knox County Schools. Although certified for the classroom, she chose instead to go to homes and instruct those children temporarily unable to attend school for medical reasons.

On April 15, 1987, tragedy struck the Freeman home. Mary Nell was giving her youngest daughter Patricia a bath. One minute, Patricia was singing in the tub, the next she had a heart attack. She never recovered. She was only 11 years old.

Reeling with grief, 13-year-old Mary turned to the counselor at school for help in dealing with her loss. Clark intervened. He called the school and insisted that the counselor not talk to his daughter. This was a matter for the family, the Church and God. No secular professionals were needed.

Decades later, fingers would point back to this period as the genesis of Mary's post-traumatic stress disorder. Mary, it was said, never recovered from the death of her sister.

 

Meanwhile, in Shannon's home, the abuse and neglect that had led to her temporary foster care by the Freemans began anew. The state stepped in and removed her and her siblings permanently from their biological home. The parental rights of her mother and father were revoked. The five children were placed in foster care and available for adoption.

The Freemans adopted 11-year-old Shannon and her siblings, 8-year-old Tabatha, 7-year-old Amanda, 6-year-
old Eric and 5-year-old Chase. The kids moved into the new rooms constructed by Clark. Mary Nell purchased a mini-van to transport her newly expanded brood. Amanda later said, “When we all became a family, Mary was so loving, and, like my sister likes to say, kind of like our other mom. She took us everywhere.”

Mary reveled in the role of big sister and back-up caretaker. She taught her new siblings to play tennis in the summer and built gingerbread houses for them at Christmas time. Mothering them filled some of the void left in Mary's heart after the death of her sister Patricia.

 

At Doyle High School, Mary went by her middle name, Carol, since her mother's name was Mary Nell. It was a typical act of a teenager seeking separation and independence from her parents. She demonstrated an interest in singing, first discovered when she joined her eighth-grade chorus. Mary sang in the girls' and mixed choruses and then competed for and earned a spot on the school's elite madrigal group. She also played tennis, volunteered as a peer tutor with the physically and mentally handicapped students in the special education classes, and was active in Young Life, a religious organization for high school and college students, and in Y-Teens, a youth leadership group.

Her classmates described her as reserved, studious and quiet, with a good sense of humor, a genuine interest in others and a constant smile on her face. They didn't know that behind that happy façade was a troubled girl, one who would hide behind the clothing in her closet when she couldn't cope. They only knew that sweet, nice girl who brightened their day.

Her loving nature embraced more than just her immediate family and classmates. Long-time family friend Christine Henderson remembered her as “a well-behaved, adorable child, always courteous and thoughtful,” who grew into an “unselfish and compassionate” teenager. She recalled Mary visiting the nursing home where Christine's elderly bedridden mother was recuperating from a broken
hip. “I'll never forget the way my mother smiled when she told me about Mary's visit.”

In Mary's senior year, Doyle and South–Young High Schools merged, forming South–Doyle High. Mary graduated from there in 1992.

In the fall, she attended Lipscomb University in Nashville, the flagship college for the churches of Christ, a form of worship that is prevalent throughout Tennessee. Even though she was living away from home, she was actively involved in family life. Every Tuesday night was Bible-reading night in the Freeman house and Mary joined in by telephone. She continued her musical interests with the University Singers and worked on the staff of the weekly newspaper,
The Lipscomb Babbler
. While there, she stopped using “Carol” and reverted to using her first name, Mary.

After two years of study, she transferred to a school offering a degree in special education, Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee—twenty miles north of Selmer.

During orientation, Mary, a tiny woman with long brown hair and an easy smile, met another transfer student, Elizabeth Gentle. They got to know each other better as they sat side-by-side in Bible class. “She was easy to get along with,” Elizabeth said. “She just had a sweet spirit about her.”

Mary was active in Phi Kappa Alpha, one of the six campus social clubs, and was a member of the campus Evangelism Forum, where she met a handsome, athletic student named Matthew Winkler.