i don’t know what to think
Matthew Winkler, a preacher in the Church of Christ, was murdered, shot to death and found in his locked bedroom. his wife is a suspect and was found with her daughters in another state. another state.
whoa whoa whoa. i just read the FoxNews website article. first of all, judging by the elder that was interviewed on FNC just now and like, my whole life… um, not charismatic (another way of saying “holy roller”). i know i’m getting all technical, but i think you’re mixing up Church of Christ with Church of God or Church of God in Christ; i understand how you could make that mistake, but yeah, not charismatic. Maybe they’re talking about his personality or something.
Late Thursday, authorities said they considered his wife, 32-year-old Mary Winkler, a suspect. She and the three girls — Breanna, 1; Mary Alice, 6; and Patricia, 8 — were found unharmed by police in Orange Beach, Ala., around 7:30 p.m., after an Amber Alert was issued for the children. She had last been seen Tuesday picking them up from school, authorities said.
i feel queasy over the whole thing. this is actually the first i’ve heard of the story. it’s really none of my business, but as it’s a CofC minister, i’m interested. he was 31. 31.
oh my goodness, he was a youth minister previously in McMinnville, Tennessee. i wonder if Rachelle’s husband knows him, he grew up there, and they’re about the same age.i’m sure i know someone who knows the family. very small world, the Church of Christ.
he and his wife met at Freed.
the FNC article says his father’s a minister and his grandfather was. i wonder if his grandfather was Wendell Winkler. he was a very well respected preacher and author and was a director of Brown Trail PTS.
this is so sad.
UPDATE: she’s confessed. this is so horrible. my heart is hurting for those little girls and the rest of the family and for the Fourth Street congregation in Selmer. they’re charging her with first degree murder, which means premeditation. those poor children.
everyone wants to know why. even i, who normally get really annoyed with these stories becoming national news, want to know why. i have a theory, but speculation is worse than gossip and is how rumors get started, so i’ll shut up now.
It appears that his father is Dan Winkler and grandfather is Wendell Winkler as you suspected. Found this info on preachersfiles.com. How sad this is! I hope the family will be granted custody of the children. Dan is apparently working on that now. They certainly need our prayers!
March 24th, 2006 at 3:38 pmAs a CoC girl myself, I had the same reaction. Since I’m here in Nashville, the local coverage did say that his grandfather was Wendell Winkler. His father Dan used to be a preacher at one of the larger churches here in town. So sad.
By the way, love your site.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:45 pm[…] Others blogging on the topic: historymike’s musings, Assorted Babble, EBBP, Pundit Guy, biblioblography, Jane Genova, World Views, Daffodil Lane, Mountaineer Musings, Home Sweet Home […]
March 25th, 2006 at 1:07 amIt’s so heartbreaking. I can’t imagine why a woman would do that to the father of her children when he was a decent man.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:54 pm“when he was a decent man…” How do you know “he was a decent man”? As a PK, I can vouch for the fact that many preachers in the Lord’s church have a facade that they present to the congregation, to the community, that seems “decent”, “perfect”, “full of charisma”, “wonderful” –all of which adjectives have been applied to Matthew Winkler. They have also all been applied to my own father–who was anything BUT these things to his wife and children. He abused with mental, emotional and physical abuse systematically, cruelly, mockingly. When I got old enough I said, “I’m going to tell So and So how you really are!” and he just laughed and said, “Who would believe you?”…He was right…Nobody did, save my other PK friends…nobody wants to hear that these things go on inside the “perfect preacher” ’s house, committed BY that “perfect preacher”. You know why? ‘Cause then, somebody might have to actually…gasp, gasp!…stand up and do the Right Thing by his wife and children!!
So have a care: if you’ve never lived inside the preacher’s house, you truly have no idea what it’s like there. I have a number of PK friends and all our stories are disturbingly similar; only the names are different.
I am sorry that Matthew was murdered, but I am glad Wendell did not live to see this day. I knew Wendell from the time I was little. At one time, my father and Wendell were friends, but the relationship cooled because of my father’s continuing ugliness and unwillingness to change. I am confident that Wendell would not have stood for wife/child abuse, whether it was his grandson or not. Wendell certainly never stood down for fear or favor. He always stood up for the Lord in every way.
Also, I do commend Matthew’s uncle Mike, who said in a sermon recently (it’s online, but I don’t have the link to it; sorry)that we don’t know what goes on in people’s lives and that we all should be reaching out to each other to try to help, instead of ignoring what is not pretty or comfortable…that we should really LOVE EACH OTHER as Christ did and does. Hooray for Mike! Maybe, just maybe, things will start to change in the Lord’s church as a result of this.
I wish I could believe that it would, but my experience(s) have taught me a very different reality.
I do pray for Mary. I believe that something was going on that she just could not see a way out of in her house and in her life. And no, she couldn’t take the children and leave; who would believe HER over her “charismatic, perfect, wonderful” husband? Who would let her keep her children if it came down to it?
Who indeed? Nobody ever wanted to listen to my mother either. And when I urged my mother to leave my father, she refused, saying it would hurt his career. She turned her own anger inward on herself and was severely, dangerously depressed at that point in her life. It was because of years and years and YEARS of cruelty, mocking,rage, hollering, sarcasm, criticism, belittling, on and on I could go–toward my mother because she did not live up to my father’s standards. Which, by the way were FAR higher and more exacting than the Lord’s standards. And which remain so.
Well…I could go on, but I think I’ve made my points sufficiently here.
Please don’t judge Mary. Not until you’ve lived a few years in the preacher’s family’s house, at least!
Just Another PK
March 29th, 2006 at 1:36 amI’ve often wondered why some stories garner national attention and others don’t. One of my friends that I grew up with (and have known since I was two) was murdered in August 2004 along with his beautiful fiance… and their story caught the national headlines. It was heartbreaking and life-changing… I’ll never be the same. I think that it was God’s plan to let people hear their particular story, because it really changed people’s lives. It’s one of those things that makes you realize that suffering can really help you realize what truly matters and it helps us look forward to heaven more and more and start letting go of this world.
Jason & Lindsay’s memorial site
I feel awful for the Winkler children. I don’t know what their home life was like, but now they’ve lost both parents. I guess the best thing to do is to pray for those little ones.
April 3rd, 2006 at 2:17 pmI sit here in shock as I read how some assume that because their lives are one way it means that Mary and Mathew’s life MUST be the same. It is sickening to see that it is Matthew that is demeaned while Mary is the one supported even though she is a murderer and the one sole reason today that her children have no parents. I find it shameful that even Matthew’s family is used against him as if to say Matthew is guilty of abuse without one supporting fact! He is just PRESUMED to be anyway. To me it is to spit in the face of Matthew’s grandfather,father,his little children, family and his congregation. He is labeled as if he has already been found guilty and convicted without one fact.
We are warned not to judge Mary even though she has confessed to planning this murder yet we are to judge Matthew as being an abusive person through only speculation? There is something inherently wrong with that upside down judgment proposal.
It is very obvious to me that one is judging Matthew by their own lives…their rage and anger is to scorn the “man” not the woman and shows total bias and a closed mind.
Matthew was taken away from those who loved him..Mary had no right to take human life and she should pay dearly for her selfish intentions.
I will continue to pray for the Winkler Family and all the many people who have said Minister Winkler made such a difference in their lives…..his memory will live on in the hearts of the ones who love and miss him.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:41 amMost people find it easy to believe the comments describing Matthew as accurate–the fact he is dead is not evident of his gretness. It is a testamony that his wife “knew him in ways” the outside world didn’t. If he represented himeself to his wife as he did to those outside the home, Matthew would still be alive. A kind, charasmatic, loving, giving, thoughtful, considerate, unselfish, man who was imitating Christ would still be alive–his wife never “saw” that side of him (because it did not exist)he was a fraud and only got that kind of praise from those who heard him preach from “a distance.” It is easy to look at a handsome man esposing beautiful comments about Jesus and think he is righteous. He knew he wasn’t the person he portrayed himself to be to the parishioners–that’s why he was too unbearable at home. Home was a “safe place where he could control everything and not be found out. Wives do respond to tenderness and love, Mary would have no reason to kill him. Imagine she had to “listen to the words so sweet flowing from his lips in the pulpit,” and then suffer his disrepest and wrath at home for her imperfections. Murder is wrong, so is the mean-spirited “preacher” who should have loved his family above himself. There was no way he could “fool” Mary.
April 15th, 2007 at 1:19 amsilverfox, you don’t know him one way or another on a personal level. i know this, because if you knew the first thing about him, you would know the people at his congregation would not be called “parishioners”. maybe you’re right about the way he was, and maybe you’re wrong. but it’s obvious you didn’t know him, so you can speak with no authority on the subject. you don’t know that he was mean-spirited or wrathful. maybe he was just critical without being either of the above. you don’t know.
and they’d be called members. the members at the congregation where he preached. it’s clunky, yes, but we’re not fancy people.
April 15th, 2007 at 9:42 am