US Current Events

pastor murdered

SELMER, Tennessee - Matthew Winkler had been the minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ for just over a year, and the community loved his straight-by-the-Bible sermons and his soft wife, Mary (32).
Now church members are struggling to understand how their charismatic 31-year-old minister could have been shot to death in his small-town parsonage.
Winkler's body was found Wednesday night. His wife and three young daughters were found Thursday in southern Alabama after a 24 hr. search.
Later Thursday, authorities said they considered Mary Winkler a suspect. She and the couple's daughters were in the family's van when a police officer spotted it parked along a road in Orange Beach, Alabama, about seven hours drive south of Selmer
"We've known from the beginning that she was either a suspect or a victim," said Jennifer Johnson, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.
TBI agents and Selmer police were on their way to Alabama Thursday night to question her and the children.
The bureau had issued an Amber Alert early Thursday for the couple's daughters, Breanna, 1, Mary Alice, 6, and Patricia, 8.
"We're just so relieved that the kids were found safe and now we can focus on the next task" of solving the crime, Johnson said.
Church members went looking for the minister when he did not show up for an evening service. They used a key to enter the parsonage -- which is a couple of miles across town from the church -- and found him dead in a bedroom late Wednesday, Police Chief Neal Burks said.
Winkler had been shot in the back. Johnson said there were no signs of forced entry at the parsonage.
Mary Winkler had last been seen late Tuesday afternoon picking up the children from school, said Ed Jones, TBI assistant director. Burks said she worked as a substitute teacher at the elementary school.
'He just preached the Bible'
Matthew Winkler was hired as minister in February 2005, said Wilburn Ash, an elder at the 200-member church in Selmer, a town of about 4,600 in western Tennessee. The job was Winkler's first full-time ministry after working as a youth minister at another church.
"They were a nice family," said former Mayor Jimmy Whittington, who said he worked with the minister collecting donations for hurricane victims last year. "They just blended in."
Ash said he never saw any conflict in the family.
"He seemed like he was real happy here, and we were happy with him," Ash said. "He preached the Bible. He didn't make his opinions known on what was popular or what was politically right. He just preached the Bible."
Members of the congregation gathered Thursday inside the one-story brick church.
"I can't believe this would happen," said Pam Killingsworth, a church member and assistant principal at Selmer Elementary, which the older Winkler children attend.
"The kids are just precious, and (Mary Winkler) was precious," Killingsworth said, her eyes red from crying and her voice cracking at times. "He was the one of the best ministers we've ever had -- just super charisma."
What kind of Criminals would commit these crimes?

posted by scubabri @ 11:58 PM