Mary Winkler Takes Custody Of Children

Do you remember Mary Winkler? Let me refresh your memory a bit.

From March 2005:

A popular and charismatic Tennessee minister was found shot to death in his parsonage, and authorities searched on Thursday for his wife and three young daughters.

The family of a slain Tennessee minister was found safe Thursday night in Orange Beach, Ala., the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said. She wasn't in Alabama to compare car insurance.

The wife of a charismatic Tennessee minister found slain in his parsonage was a suspect in his death, authorities said, after she and the couple’s three daughters were found in Alabama following a daylong search.

The wife of a slain minister confessed to shooting him at their church parsonage, then fleeing to Alabama, where she was found the following night with their three young daughters, authorities said Friday.

From April 2005:

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.

From April 2007:

A jury found Winkler guilty of voluntary manslaughter Thursday after eight hours of deliberation.

From June 2007:

A minister’s wife convicted of killing her husband will ask for a new trial when she returns to court for sentencing on Friday, a defense lawyer said Tuesday.

A woman who killed her preacher husband with a shotgun blast to the back as he lay in bed was sentenced Friday to three years in prison, but with time served could be released on probation in a little more than two months.

A woman convicted in the shooting death of her preacher husband was moved from a county jail to a mental health facility, officials said Thursday.

From August 2007:

Mary Winkler, the Tennessee woman convicted in April of voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 shooting death of her husband, preacher Matthew Winkler, was released from custody on Tuesday.

Which brings us to August of 2008.

Apparently, after serving her time and paying her debt to society, the court feels she will be more than suitable to raise her children.

Mary Winkler, the woman convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 shooting death of her minister husband, has taken custody of her three daughters, one of her lawyers said Monday.

Rachael Putnam, a custody attorney, said the former minister's wife picked the girls up Friday from the slain man's parents, Dan and Diane Winkler. "She is absolutely overjoyed," Putnam said.

Let's just hope she doesn't take part in anymore Nigerian email scams, or run off and marry any more preachers.