By Beth Rucker
SELMER, Tenn. (AP) — A preacher's wife accused of killing her husband with a shotgun blast had been depositing bad checks and feared he would find out, a prosecutor said as her murder trial opened Thursday.
The defense told jurors she killed her husband accidentally while trying to protect their child from him.
Mary Winkler, 33, only intended to hold her husband at gunpoint to force him to talk about his personal problems after a situation involving their 1-year-old daughter, Breanna, defense attorney Steve Farese said. The defense did not describe the situation.
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| Winkler family |
"The morning he did what he did to Breanna, she was going to get his attention — with the very things he had always threatened her with," Farese said. He said Matthew Winkler had threatened his wife with a gun many times.
A prosecutor described former Decatur resident Matthew Winkler as a preacher, a good father and a man who trusted his wife. Even after she was arrested, Mary Winkler told police her husband was "a mighty fine person," Assistant District Attorney Walt Freeland said.
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