My Ugly Came Out

Selmer, Tennessee, is a small town of about 4,400 people in McNairy County, in the south-west of the state, roughly an hour and three-quarters from Memphis and two and a half hours from Nashville. In January 2005 the Fourth Street Church of Christ there called a new pulpit preacher: Matthew Bryan Winkler, born in Texas on 21 November 1974 and raised in a travelling Church of Christ family. His father, Dan, was a minister and adjunct professor, his mother a teacher, and his grandfather Wendell an evangelist who preached for more than fifty years across the South-East. Matthew graduated from Austin High School in Decatur, Alabama, in 1993 and went to Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now Her father refused to allow counselling and insisted the matter stay inside the family. details of the account remain covered until revealed They dated for about three months before he proposed and married in April 1996 in her family's backyard in Knoxville, with her father officiating. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The marriage quickly showed another side. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed In July 1998 he became youth minister at the Goodwood Boulevard Church of Christ in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; seven months later the family moved to Pegram, Tennessee, where he took the same post at the Bellevue Church of Christ and they bought their first house. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now In April 2002 Matthew moved to the Central Church of Christ in McMinnville, Tennessee. details of the account remain covered until revealed In January 2005 he was called to Selmer. Neighbours and friends later recalled warning signs. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed In Selmer, Dan and Sharon Everett lived across the street with six foster children and a Rottweiler. When the dog strayed onto the Winklers' lawn, Matthew crossed the street, shouted at one of the children and at Sharon, and threatened to kill the dog; when Dan went over to smooth things over, Matthew told him there was a law against firing guns in the city limits and that he would shoot the dog if he saw it again. There was a police report. Sharon said that if he behaved like that in public, one could imagine what he was like in private. Brianna, the third daughter, was born prematurely in March 2005 and kept in a Nashville hospital 150 miles away, and the family was short of money. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it She was caught by a Nigerian advance-fee fraud, depositing cheques from Canada and Nigeria totalling $17,500 and withdrawing $500, then discovering that the cheques were fake. Rather than tell Matthew, she began moving money between accounts, opening new ones in her own name and changing her mailing address to a post box. By March 2006 the family account at Regions Bank was overdrawn by $5,000. On 20 March the church secretary, Betty Wilkerson, saw the couple lunching and laughing in Matthew's office. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed At about ten o'clock Matthew telephoned the church elder Roger Grant and said they had had a disagreement but everything was fine. At 6.15 the next morning, 22 March 2006, Brianna woke crying. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He rolled onto the floor, asked why, and she said she was sorry and loved him. She unplugged the telephone from the wall, took the three girls and drove away in the family's grey Toyota Sienna. They did not attend the bank meeting at noon. That evening Matthew failed to appear at the Wednesday service. Church members drove to the parsonage, knocked, heard the television and, on an elder's instruction, found the spare key and let themselves in. In the master bedroom they found Matthew face down in a pool of blood with a shotgun wound in his back; a money clip full of cash and his driving licence were still on the dresser. He had been dead for more than twelve hours. this part of the story is covered for now On 23 March Officer Jason Whitlock of the Orange Beach, Alabama, police spotted the van, saw it make an illegal U-turn on Perdido Beach Boulevard and stopped it; three units surrounded it in a Walmart car park. details of the account remain covered until revealed The girls were unharmed; a shotgun was in the back. She had spent the previous night at a Fairfield Inn in Jackson, Mississippi, paying cash, and had taken the girls to the beach and an amusement park, saying that she wanted them to have a happy day before bad days. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it In Tennessee the TBI agent John Mayor interviewed her again. She said the bank had called, that there were money troubles mostly her fault, that Matthew had been criticising the way she walked and ate, and that she had snapped. She said she did not remember getting the gun, heard a loud boom, and that his last word was 'why'. She admitted unplugging the phone but could not say why. this part of the story is covered for now Bail was set at $750,000, and on 12 August 2006 her father mortgaged property to post it. She went to live with Rudy and Kathy Thompson in McMinnville, worked at the Cleaners Express and began dating Darrell Pillow, the owner's brother. In November 2006 People magazine put the family on its cover. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The prosecutor, Walt Freeland, argued that she had deliberately racked a pump-action twelve-gauge, shot her sleeping husband in the back, unplugged the phone and driven 340 miles with the weapon, with a $5,000 overdraft and a bank meeting hours away. The defence, Steve Farese Sr. and Leslie Ballin, described a decade of verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse: that Matthew controlled what she ate and wore, threatened her with the shotgun, made her wear white platform heels and an afro wig, forced her to watch pornography and to submit to oral and anal sex. The psychologist Lynn Zager diagnosed mild depression and post-traumatic stress disorder dating from her sister's death and said that she could not form intent. this part of the story is covered for now Patricia, nine, testified that her father never hurt her mother and described hearing a boom and seeing him groaning on the floor. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Her taped interview with Oprah Winfrey was broadcast on 12 September 2007; she was halting and evasive, said the shooting was not planned and claimed that the financial scheme had been Matthew's idea. In August 2008, after a custody battle in Jackson, Tennessee, she won full custody of her three daughters, with the Winklers retaining visitation. In 2010 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and during a relapse had to let the girls stay with the Winklers for a time. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it