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What Drove the Preacher's Wife?

The LA Times today ran a long article of the same title examining possible motivations for Mary Winkler killing her husband, a church of Christ preacher in Tennessee. The AP reported on a possible source for the financial problems that precipitated the murder:

A woman accused of shooting her preacher husband to death after they argued over money may have been taken in by a remarkably common scam that strained their finances and their marriage. Mary Winkler, who is charged with murder, had gotten tangled up along with her husband, Matthew, in a swindle known as an advance-fee fraud, in which victims are told that a sweepstakes prize or other riches are waiting for them if they send in money to cover the processing expenses, her lawyers say. ``They were always kind of living on the edge of their budget," defense attorney Steve Farese said, ``so I'm sure this would have just wrecked their budget."

The Christian Chronicle reported that she made $750,000 bail and that her trial is set to begin October 30. From todays LA Times article by Peter H. King:

She complained to investigators about constant carping from her husband, criticisms about "the way I walked, what I ate, everything." She mentioned financial pressures, which she described as "mostly my fault, bad bookkeeping." It was, she said, "just building to a point. I was just tired of it. I guess I just got to a point and I snapped." Certain details about her journey from adored preacher's wife to accused husband slayer Mary Winkler did not share with the Tennessee investigators in that initial interview. She did not tell them, for instance, about the bad checks she'd been passing through a web of bank accounts, transactions that had prompted a concerned call from the bank the day before her husband was shot. Nor did she tell them about her apparently related entanglement in what is known as a Nigerian scam, a common and often ruinous form of fraud that preys on those naive enough to believe they are about to come into big and easy money, if only they play along.

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