SELMER, Tenn. (ABP) — Mary Winkler allegedly killed her husband, a 31-year-old pastor, because of financial and familial problems — problems often present but undetected in the lives of pastors' wives.
After posting her $750,000 bond, Winkler's lawyers said, she left jail Aug. 15 for McMinnville, Tenn., where she will live with a family friend and work at a local dry cleaners until her first-degree murder trial starts in October.
At a June bond hearing, officials said Winkler said she shot her husband March 22 because she “snapped” in response to his repeated criticism and her ongoing stress about finances. Matthew Winkler was pastor of Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer. Congregants found him in the church parsonage with a fatal bullet wound in his back.
Mary Winkler, 32, reportedly fell prey to the “Nigeria Scam,” a popular e-mail scam that gets victims to pay advance fees to receive supposed lottery winnings. Annual losses to all forms of the Nigerian scam total more than $100 million in the United States and more than $1.5 billion worldwide, according to law enforcement officials, even though only 1 percent of the people targeted are duped. The average loss is $5,575, according to the FBI.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Winkler also deposited more than $17,000 by check-kiting — writing a check from one bank, depositing it at a second bank and then withdrawing the money before the check clears.
The Winkler case has brought to light the oft-hidden tension and dysfunction that sometimes haunts pastors' families. While counselors and family experts can only speculate about Winkler's particular case, they can offer an inside look into the pressures prevalent among pastors' wives.
Karen Luce, who co-wrote Claiming the High C's about marriage and family relationships, has worked in Christian counseling and teaching for nearly 40 years. According to Luce, disagreements about money are the cause of family trouble 65 percent to 80 percent of the time.
“When frustration and hurt and fear are not dealt with, anger will always erupt, and angry people can act out in innumerably sinful ways,” Luce told Associated Baptist Press. “Depression is the other side of this. So you can often see either anger coming out at other people or depression being turned inward at self. The end results would be murder or suicide. These are not uncommon.”
Oftentimes, Luce said, women who have excelled in school or other activities are left behind or overlooked in favor of their pastor-husbands, who often must work long hours and spend intimate time with other women in counseling sessions. The new role of taking a back-seat to her husband can cause some wives to resent him or the church, Luce said.
“These are women who have shone, and now they are considered secondary,” Luce said. “And perhaps all they are asked to do is work in the nursery … which may not even be related to their spiritual gifts.”
Indeed, ignoring a woman's spiritual gifts and criticizing her are ways churches — and pastors — contribute to pent-up frustration. Sometimes, that criticism can even develop into emotional abuse.
Jon Christian Ryter, a journalist who writes opinion news on his blog, www.newswithviews.com, reported that an estimated 2 million to 4 million women in the United States fall victim to domestic violence each year. But twice that number — 4-8 million spouses — become the victims of emotional abuse.
Most experts define emotional abuse as anything designed to humiliate or psychologically hurt or control another person. It includes belittling remarks, insults, name-calling, cursing and threatening others.
“Clearly, there was something wrong in paradise,” Ryter wrote of the Winklers in a March 29 post. “If Mary Winkler was an emotionally abused wife, the Winklers managed to keep their secret from all of those who knew them.”
According to the Associated Press, Winkler told police she had suffered from her husband's criticism, complaining that he “had really been on me lately, criticizing me for things — the way I walk, what I eat, everything. It was just building up to a point. I was tired of it.”
Church members also contribute to the problem, counselors say. Besides dishing out insensitive criticism, they sometimes gossip about pastors' wives under the guise of telling “prayer requests.” Treatment like that, Luce said, sometimes leads to eating disorders, substance abuse, depression and anxiety. It also affects the children, she said.
“Children always watch adults,” she said. “If they see Mommy acting out, they will either follow her or they can get very worried and concerned. In school, they could be underachievers or overachievers … or just lost.”
Apparently, church members in the small Tennessee town had no idea how Mary Winkler felt. Reactions from neighbors and church members consisted of shock and dismay at the previously undetected dysfunction.
“The Mary we knew didn't do this,” Anita Whirley, a Church of Christ member, told Ryter. “She was a wonderful person. We just don't understand. They were a good Christian family. They always seemed so happy.”
And that perception of happiness is part of the problem, said Tony Rankin in an Associated Baptist Press interview right after Winkler's initial hearing. Rankin is a pastoral and family counselor for the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
In Rankin's opinion, pastors' wives sometimes engage in an unattainable quest for perfection, often isolating themselves and losing a sense of reality along the way. Staff members and congregations alike would do well to remember that just because a woman has married a minister doesn't mean she's perfect, he said.
“Living this intensely does not mean increased production,” Rankin said. “You just have to set some boundaries.”
Rankin also said that absence of boundaries creates physical, mental and emotional damage that can sap energy and happiness. Avoiding isolation by connecting with a small core of women and maintaining a good sense of humor are vital as well.
“Find a way to have some fun,” he said. “The minister's family needs to have some fun too. I don't know why some think they need to be so serious….”
While Winkler may not find much to laugh at during her stay in McMinnville, residents of the area reportedly have shown support for her as she moved out of the McNairy County Jail. Many have offered prayers or stopped by the dry cleaning shop where Winkler will work, the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville reported Aug. 17.
Winkler will live with Kathy and Rudie Thomsen, friends from the Central Church of Christ, where her husband once served as youth minister. She cannot leave the county except to see her attorneys and children, who are with their paternal grandparents. Winkler and the grandparents are discussing visitation rights.
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