By Woody Baird

SELMER, Tenn. (AP) — Attorneys for a minister's wife accused of killing her husband in their small-town parsonage asked a judge Wednesday to throw out her statements to police, claiming she was arrested illegally.

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Mary Winkler was apprehended in Orange Beach, Ala., the day after the March 22 slaying. Defense attorneys said that authorities lacked probable cause.

Prosecutor Walter Freeland said the Orange Beach police acted properly in holding Winkler for questioning.

"Anything less than they did would be the grossest dereliction of duty," Freeland said.

Attorneys said they would file additional written arguments, perhaps by next week, and Judge Weber McCraw gave no indication when he would rule.

In a statement to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Winkler said she shot her husband with a 12-gauge shotgun after a night of arguing over finances and other family problems.

At a hearing Wednesday, an agent with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation said Winkler admitted shooting her husband, Matthew Winkler, but resisted talking about him.

"She said she didn't want the news media smearing him," said agent Stan Stabler.

Stabler said Winkler told him she had not been physically abused. But asked by defense lawyer Steve Farese if she talked about a "life-threatening experience" with her husband several years earlier, Stabler said she did.

Stabler did not give details. He said Winkler told him her marriage improved after that incident, but it had begun to deteriorate over the past year.

Outside court, Farese refused to discuss the incident, but defense lawyers have implied since her arrest that she had a troubled marriage. Prosecutors also refused to talk about the investigation.

Members of Matthew Winkler's Fourth Street Church of Christ found his body after his family failed to show up for an evening service. Winkler and their three young daughters were missing, and authorities issued a nationwide Amber Alert.

The Winkler children are living with their father's parents.

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