The mom did it
When I saw the news flash that the minister in West Tennessee was found dead and there was an Amber Alert for the car and the mom and three kids were missing, I thought the worst. I thought the mom did it. Now she has confessed. At the risk of looking like a fool in a week or two, I will also admit that my first thought was that the minister, who was a "pillar of the community" was a tyrant at home and she did it in a sort of self-defense move. Or maybe there was some adultry. I didn't used to think this way. Susan Smith taught me to.When the Susan Smith thing started, I was working on a cruise ship, and we had just started getting CNN on satellite. That was all we got, so we watched it all the time. And it was all Susan Smith, all the time. We watched her tearfully tell the cameras that an unidentified black man took her car and kidnapped her kids. I was really shaken. When the news conference was over, the girl I was dating at the time said, quite matter of factly, "She did it."
We had a heated exchange over the circumstances. I tried to explain to her some convoluted premise about how a woman in the south (my girlfriend was English) could be intimidated by a man and give up her car and blah, blah, blah. I don't even remember my argument anymore. Like everyone else in America, I couldn't even fathom the true scenario.
So she just said, "I don't care if it is in the south of America or Ethiopia, there is no way a mother is going to stand by and just let someone take her children from her. She doesn't have a scratch on her. She did it." And a week later, we found out she did. And now that I'm a father, I know exactly the undisputed truth of that argument.
I no longer assume that the "mom couldn't possibly be guilty." I can suspect a woman being involved in a heinous crime as easily as I can suspect a man.
I guess I am a feminist.
posted by Nashville Knucklehead @ 5:57 PM
9 Comments:
It's the first thing I thought, too. And, I think there was dark stuff at home.
When she and the kids were missing, I knew it had to be her. I think you're right that it's going to turn out that he beat her or molested the kids or was having an affair.
Since most of the church members though that she was likely dead, too, I'm going with something in the house, like abuse. If he was having an affair, someone in the church would have known.
p.s. Ha, ha, you said you were a feminist!
uh . . . Aunt B. . . .when I misspelled adultery, I was talking about her.
Funny, I was having the same conversation earlier.
Here's my take: Everyone in that town describes the wife as being the "perfect" wife and "perfect" mother. I suspect that she got tired of having to be so damn "perfect" all the time and snapped.
Nothing is perfect. And behind those "perfect" posed photos of the "perfect" family, I too suspect something less than "perfect" was going on.
Should be interesting.
p.s. My Mom said the same thing about Susan Smith - that NO MOTHER would stand by while someone took her children. Her direct quote was "Someone would have to kill me to take away my children."
I remember the thing that tipped me off about Susan Smith was during the interviews and such, she was not crying any tears, like the dad was. I was a young mother of children the exact same ages as those little boys and knew that if that were me, I'd have been hysterical. She weren't hysterical.
As for Mrs. Winkler....the first picture I saw of her, the perfect family standing together, all smiles, there was something in her eyes as well as the folks in the community claiming them to be an "ideal couple" and proclaiming her to be "the perfect mother."
The Right Reverend Winkler may very well have been an abuser or adulterer,porn freak, meth maker, but, keep in mind, Mrs. Winkler (I can't help but think Fonzie when I utter that name) could also be the adulterer. Shooting somebody in the back is somewhat cowardly.
It's a shame though that the Susan Smith's and Scott Peterson's of this world make a dead man, killed in his own home by the mother of his children, guilty when he's not around to defend himself. That's the world we live in for ya.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
I, myself, don't think it's adultery. I have driven through Selmer, Tennessee more times than I can count. The town is small enough (population +/- 5000) that you can't scratch your ass without someone knowing about it.
I think it was something dark but adultery just doesn't ring true to me. I could be wrong, but that's not my gut instinct on this one.
On another note, this woman had to be desperate. She obviously didn't have a plan. Seems like an act of desperation that happened quite quickly, as she took the family van and loaded up the kids, knowing that everyone would miss her and be worried for her safety first and then wonder why the 4 of them were gone. She also had to know that the surviving spouse is ALWAYS the main suspect. This woman had no plan. This obviously wasn't premeditated. And the shot in the back of the head is interesting too...she can't claim self-defense.
Well, she blew her chance to get her God given child support checks. I guess she did not want the stain of divorce on her soul or credit history. Sometimes I wish my ex had just shot me in the back of the head and took off on holiday with the kids.
For what it's worth, my first thought was not adultery, but abuse.
I didn't know that she shot him in the back of the head. That would also point to abuse; she was afraid of confronting him head-on, even with a gun, so she snuck up behind him.
Exador, I think you're spot on. Plus, usually when women kill their husbands to be with some man, they run away with or to that man. We haven't heard even a hint of that.
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