Article: Beliefwatch: Mrs. Pastor.(Mary Winkler trial)

Byline: Matthew Philips

In Selmer, Tenn. (population: 4,600), last week, the murder trial of Mary Winkler began with defense lawyers painting the soft-spoken pastor's wife as the victim of an abusive marriage who accidentally pulled the trigger on a 12-gauge shotgun that killed her Church of Christ pastor husband last March. Although prosecutors say the act was purposeful and premeditated, when police caught up to Winkler a day later along Alabama's Gulf Coast, she alluded to a steady flow of criticism and abuse as her motive. "I guess I just got to a point and snapped," she told police.

Though Winkler's case is, to say the very least, extreme, her ...

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