Mary said the shot gun went off "accidently" Did the phone get unplugged accidently? Did the reservations for her get away get made accidently too? Did she accidently write 17 THOUSAND dollars of hot checks for which she and Matt were to meet the authorities at the bank the day he was shot to talk about paying it back? (The last I knew, writing checks for money you knew you did not have was a crime but she got away with that too)

What would YOU do if you accidently shot someone? Would you watch them bleed to death or would you call 911?

Also, there was NO EVIDENCE of abuse and I contend there is a good chance Matt did not even know about the high heels that were used to prove his abuse. He is no longer here to defend himself as she trashes his name more and more.

There are thousands of resources for abused women but very few for abused men. Often if men called a domestic violence hotline he is either called a liar or is hung up on. Often men who call the police for being beaten is will end up in jail as he is the one who will be arrested Yet at least half of the victims of abuse are MEN! This is according to every unbiased research and report I have seen but go ahead and only listen to the reports taken by feminist groups although this would be like asking Ronald McDonald what the best hamburger is.

I would love DATELINE to give equal time to the other side of this story but I doubt they will. Just like Congress does each time the Violence Against Women Act is up for renewal....they will get statements from many feminist groups but never any from the other side. This is just like writing racial relations laws while getting advice from the KKK but never asking the NAACP!
Is it not time to listen to BOTH SIDES? To value ALL our people even if they happen to be male? We have been told that we have a right to defend ourselves from attacks…but you do NOT have this right if you are a man and your attacker happens to be FEMALE!
Do some research. Do a web search for Shattered Men, Abused Men, and Media Radar and remember, one sided laws that only protect half the victims of domestic abuse at the expense of the other half will only make it more dangerous for everyone. It will also enable some to literally get away with premeditated murder!

Accidently posted twice.

until you have walked in the shoes of someone who is and has been abused, you really cant understand or comment or judge for that matter what that victim is dealing with. Domestic abuse, mental, verbal horrible abuse is unconscionable. It goes without saying that to take the life of someone else is not the right answer, but when you are living in such horrific circumstances... it is literally a battle of life and death for the victim on a DAILY basis... trust me when I say this, it is a battle of survival... and I understand. I have lived it and still do even though my abuser is away from me. I live in constant fear. Fear that he is gonna find me. If he ever, EVER comes near me again and attacks me, I have taken self defense classes and am prepared to do whatever it takes to stop him in his tracks.

I didnt do what Mary did to my abuser, in fact, I didnt even hit him back or put my hands up to protect me because if I did, he would hit me harder and the hitting would last for longer... I stood there and took it. I was married to him for 10 YEARS..I couldnt get away. he had me so terrified of everything and everybody.. And let me tell you something, THAT does something to your psyche and it destroys a person not only on the outside but on the inside as well. i endured HOURS of him screaming horrible outrageous things inches from my face, was made to sit and witness him destroy property so close to me that it almost touched my face.. he would rage on me for hours, keep me from sleeping and this would go on for 5-8 hours straight... You get brainwashed.. your self esteem goes down hill, you are reduced to a nub of a person, they keep you in constant doubt and fear and you dont know who you can trust.. so it makes it soooo difficult to figure out HOW to get help and who you can talk to who you can trust. It is NOT that easy to leave. Our court systems are set up to give criminals every opportunity to make it right, our courts do NOT punish the wrong doers like they should.. and the victims suffer and we know this and it keeps us from getting help!!! yea he will go to jail for 72 hours after that first call, but then you just opened a HUGE padoras box and you know he is gonna get out of jail and you KNOW he is even more pissed off than before and you KNOW he is really coming after you... I was almost killed several times and all he got was 1 year in jail and now he is FREE, wtf...and now live in fear every day that he will find me.... I am being hunted and I live in constant fear for my life. Yea he went to jail. and Yea,I have another protective order and there are court orders in place AGAIN and yea, he is free, and yea he is stalking me still to this day because he is so disordered that he doesnt think he has to follow the rules. The court system doesnt work for the victims... bc the abusers could give 2 sh@ts for any law or protective order or court order. I had both in place when I almost lost my life again at the hands of my abuser.

The mental emotional abuse is sooooo horrible, worse than physical abuse. You have NO IDEA how this affects the victim. Your body physically starts to shut down because your adrenal glands become exhausted from the constant stress... your body cannot physically recover... and when you have adrenal exhaustion, your whole physical body just doesnt act or respond right... look it up, all those that are quick to judge here.....

Also look up Borderline Personality Disorder and you will begin to see into the window of what victims of this kind of abuse deal with...

She didnt have the right to murder him BUT HE did NOT have the right to torture her and her children for all those years and he did NOT have the right to TERRORIZE them... and that is all I am gonna say..

She served her time... she has to live with the choice she has made... she is a mother who was in survival mode to protect her children and herself....

Ugh, something is wrong with this woman. Bad enough she killed her husband , people you can get a divorce! Now she is raising 3 children!! Who is the genius who made that decision? In the interview she seems to be very unstable and capable of going off the deep end again any second. I feel bad for the kids. The justice systems in this case did not work

I have a question for the abused commenting.... did you not tell anyone? Did you not ever give a hint that you were not happy in your relationship at least? Did you argue or disagree around friends? Did people have any clue that you were having trouble- not abuse but just unhappy?

I just want to somehow understand... how could NOBODY have a clue with this couple when they were very public. Matthew was a youth minister before he was a preacher. I am baffled that not one person saw anything. That position involves lots of late hours when guards tend to drop. Teenagers notice EVERYTHING especially the tendencies of their teachers/ leaders. It makes me question everything Mary says.

Also the oldest daughter was 9 when this happened. She has never said that her father abused her. In fact she has never said she witnessed anything abusive... verbal or physical.

I thought it was really odd that Mary still has pictures of Matthew all over the house. If he was so evil, why does she want the girls to have memories of him? Why does she want to remember him?

I think I was a little more fiesty than Mary. I really never hit him back, but at the end I got to a point that I was done, got a little back bone & wasn't going take it anymore. I guess you could call it my breaking point. I started fighting back. I think Mary was to scared to fight back & maybe her brain just kinda popped. She didn't know what else to do. I don't know, I wasn't there. I do agree with the fact that she has had her judgement here from her peers & now it is up to God to judge her.

While the C O C is not to be blamed I believe the show demonstrated the control factor to females, both from her husband and her church. Most small southern churches view men and husbands as the "voice in all matters of the church and family". Therefore Mary's only choice within the church was to seek the powers that be- the male dominant view. In addition, the C O C do not believe in the other churches or ministers.In reality she became a victim of two things: no outside help and only "her church" to look. Finally, here in the south religion is everything until our beliefs cause trouble and then we blame it on the person. Both Mary and Matthew needed help and neither sought it- they destroyed one another in the end.

I keep hearing people asking where is the proof of abuse, I never saw one thing to show it. UM... did you not watch the program? As I recall someone saw her with a black eye, and others said they witnessed him "belittle her" and how her demeanor would change like a "switch" when he walked in the room. How are those not signs of abuse??? If that isn't forms of abuse then I don't know what is!!

amazing how she only had the 'courage' to accuse him of abuse after she shot him in the back and killed him.

one day she'll get what she deserves.

 if you have a mother, daughter, sister, aunt or friend please understand this is real.

Remember also, if you have a father, son, brother or uncle or male friend....they too can be murdered in their sleep and the woman who did it could get away with it too.  It has happened in this nation dozens upon dozens of times as women have any one of 12 famale only excuses to get away with murder....literally!

So let me see if I've got this straight : She commits serious and highly illegal acts of fraud . She was determined to be mentally incompetent . She murdered her husband in cold blood and planned her escape .

Now , with that said , not only is she considered a fair and balanced source for specific information on the matter but she is absolved of any wrongdoing due to her claims of abuse at the hands of the deceased . Furthermore , there are people who insist that she did the right thing .

Well , this is what happens when you allow emotional responses to trump objective fact . A proven liar who is a proven fraud is somehow trustworthy enough to be considered innocent of the most serious of crimes because people who identify with her supposed plight just assume she's telling the truth despite the fact that every indication suggests she's a murdering liar .

I'm not sure what's more dangerous : People like Mary or the people who think that guilt and innocence should be decided on feelings rather than evidence .

I wonder how many of her defenders would like to see her romantically involved with some man they love .

Perfect example of the Pu66y Pass.

That smile when they announced the verdict was the smile of someone who had just gotten away with murder. The jury were a bunch of simpletons who were tricked by two smooth lawyers and a really good actress on the stand. 200 days for shooting someone in the back. Unbelievable.

Devil seems to be in the details:

If her husband was aware of the financial situation, instructed her to deposit the bogus checks, Why did she need to change the mail delivery from the home to a P.O Box? The husband would have been aware of the numerous bank accounts she had opened if he was instructing her to do it all. She said she asked numerous times for him to go to the bank/banks to discuss there status. She was not planning on leaving him and shaming the family or his standing in the church, so she said. So she wouldn't have needed additional accounts to hide money?

The platform heels, the attorney presented them as the SAME KIND of platform heels, she acknowledged the same kind... why not present the actual heels?...and where was the wig?

I don't believe her husband was smothering his daughter making her pass out. Looks like she got over...I do believe she has a mental problem...though...but not so debilitating she couldn't get away with "Black out...Outer Body experience" of murder.

If you belong to any Church, whether it be Church of Christ, any other Church, or even if you don't belong to a Church. Go to God's word and read the part about what Jesus did for us. Anybody can be evil. You don't know what goes on in someone's life and until you've been there, don't judge others. I believe her story and only God knows what went on in that home and I pray that God will take care of her and her children. Children can remember things at a very young age and you have to remember, these children may come out one day and tell more things about what he did in that home to that family. It could have very well been the other way around and this woman did what she had to do. I don't believe she planned it, I believe he pushed her over the edge and he caused her to snap. He was a preacher and that means he knew the Bible better than some of us. If that Church lived by the Bible as his father testified to in court, then you show me in the Bible where it says by being the man of the house you have the right to sexually abuse your wife and physically abuse your own daughters. I don't think his parents would have forgiven her, if they didn't believe their son caused this. Think about that. Thank God, she can live in peace with her daughters. I will continue to pray for her instead of judge her.

hmmm... so a woman can shoot a man in the back while he sleeps, watch him bleed to death without calling for medical assistance, take off with the children for a nice vacation after commitng these actions, be declared to be mentally incompetent to be held accountable for her actions, and have the media and many so called advocates treat her as a hero while they make accusations about someone who isn't here to tell his side of the story? just exactly who is the abuser and who is the abused here?

 I attended the COC when I was a child and as a young adult. I never heard that a woman was supposed to stay in a marriage that was abusive?? I always heard if you divorced (except for adultery) you were not to marry again. Even in our small congregation, we had divorced people. So, I really don't understand what is being said. We actually had a preacher in our congregation who had divorced and married again and as well as I remember nothing was really said about it. So, for her to say she HAD to stay or kill him is STUPID. Messy with a divorce, but seems to me a whole lot messier to kill a man while he sleeps. And as far as his sicy mother, I think I would be pretty icy myself if I had to listen to the load of garbage being said about my son who can defend himself. And the platform shoes, puleeze, not reason to murder, divorce maybe, but not murder. She has gotten away with murder.

Okay, in my post, I meant my son who CANNOT defend himself. I really don't have any sympathy for her, I have dealt with a lot in my life, but murder was never an option when things were bad.

 I am disgusted at the domestic abuse trial that this man has gone through without ANY evidence of such a crime. This woman killed in cold blood and all these militant feminists can do is bad mouth a dead man on the word of a murderer. She continues to profit from the heinous assumption that every man is guilty of domestic violence until proven innocent. This is the legacy of hate feminism in this country. A mans life is now worth nothing and the people on this board, as well as those who cheer people like Winkler from NOW and other 'supporters', are proud of it.

... meanwhile, in indiana, an abuser is caught on film for national tv punching and kicking the other parent of theirdaughter and the event is virtually ignored by dv advocates and the news media. where are the ouraged voices calling for the automatic arrest of this abuser? where is the hardhitting journalistic investigative reporting asking why local authorities need to spend months investigating an event that was televised for the whole world to see? where are the advocates who should be demanding that the authorities should take steps to protect the victim and their child from this abuser? i guess this kind of response only applies when the victim is female and the abuser is male. i guess you shouldn't expect justice and fair play when the victim's name is gary and the abuser's name is amber. this just doesn't fit into the establishment's and the media's narrative that only females are victims and only males are abusers.

Unless you have been there and had to live this reality then you can not make judgement on this woman or her family or her children. Unless you have had a person like this in your life you don't believe the nasty truth about them. You don't. Unless you are the one living with this person, you only believe the charm that they show you, you believe the smile that they show you, you believe the friendship that they show you, you believe the charismatic, lovely, salesman (and that is what they are, they are selling you a version of them of what they want you to believe that they are). Your friends and their family don't believe what you tell them cause that's not what they have seen this person to be like. Your friends and their family can see the bruises and still not believe that this person would ever do that to you. You lie about the bruises, you cover up not for them but for yourself. You don't want to tell anybody the truth, you don't want anybody to look at you as if you are soo stupid to have let this situation to have happened to you. You feel stupid enough to have allowed this to have happened, you don't want or need judgement from someone else to tell you 'how could you have allowed this to happen'. It comes out of now where and its not until its too late do you come out of the fog and see what the reality is. You are in an abusive relationship. Where do you go when no one believes you, who do you turn to when they have seperated you from your family and friends. Unless you have lived through this you can not judge this woman or her family or her children. The guilt that her family share for not seeing it will always be more than enough punishment. The guilt that she carries for not seeing it will always be with her. I give this woman the credit for being the bigger person and for wanting to shield her girls from the truth of the man that is their father, I give her the credit for not giving up on them, I give her credit for still being able to hold her head high and to deal with the reality of the life that is now in front of her. She is one of the lucky ones to have gotten herself and her girls out alive and that is what you have to remember. She and her girls got out alive!

As a warning. If you get pushed, get out, get them out, end the relationship. You don't and they believe this is your way of letting it go, that its not a big deal, that they have gotten away with that, then the push becomes a slap, you let that go and the slap becomes a punch, you let that go and it becomes a kick and so on and so on.

They test you to see what you will let them get away with. You let that first push become a slap and you have let them get away with it. You don't yell and scream at them to not treat you that way, that means nothing to them. If you yell and scream not to be treated that way but you let their sad 'im so sorry baby I didn't mean it' make you think twice and make you know in your head and your heart that this is wrong, and you forgive them for it, then you have just let them get away with it. If you end the relationship and then you take them back after one of these episodes of 'im sorry baby, i didn't mean it', then you have just let them get away with it. You end it right there and then, you don't look back, you don't take them back, you don't let them contact you. If you don't, then its your nightmare that begins and then you will know what this lady and her family went through.

So we shouldn't judge this woman but we should just automatically judge Matthew Winkler to be an abuser?  

I never understood abuse til I got in the mix. Teeth knocked out, choked to passing out...yea, I finally stopped being scared, went to the cops and he went to prison. I thought of gettin' him in his sleep. I couldn't get away...NEVER AGAIN.

For those of you on this blog who do not believe Mary's story I can honestly say I see way too many of your kind every day of my life. You can't see the forest for the trees and have no idea of the pain, emotional scarring, and mental health issues that follow the abuse victim the rest of their life. Because you didn't see it happen with your own two eyes, well then it simply can't be true.

Wake the eff up people!!

THE SECOND I heard that Mr. Wonderful Preacher had pornographic material (100's of pages Mr. Morrison stated) on his computer I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Mary was telling the truth. How is it you people can find it so easy to believe that Catholic priests have molested and sexually abused children, but you can't believe a Church of Christ pastor was one sick SOB?

No wonder there are so many victims of abuse when the majority refuse to believe in the propensity towards evil that human beings possess (especially the male species) even when it stares you in the face. Someone please explain to me why the perfect Matthew Winkler, pastor exemplified had so much pornography on his computer? Maybe it was for a sermon or research on the subject of depravity.

Am I making any sense to you, have I hit a nerve yet or are you so holier than thou because you are secretly doing the same things? Maybe you just wish, fantasize or daydream about being sexually perverted, but because you don't act on it therefore no one else does either. In addition to being an abusive spouse Mr. Winkler had all of the symptoms and is a classic example of a severe bi-polar disorder. Top it off with the spiritual war constantly raging within him and you have a recipe for one mentally unstable man.

Victims of abuse...some rise above, some disappear into their own personal hell, some imitate what was done to them by doing it to others, some take their own lives and some take the life of their abuser, but no one ever wins.