The Pastor's Wife
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Mary Winkler is a housewife and mother of three daughters who is married to Matthew Winkler, a pastor who is admired by many in his community for his friendliness and his views about family values. To many in town the Winklers are seen as a perfect family with Matthew as a perfect husband and wonderful father and Mary as a dutiful wife and mother. However, early one morning at the Winkler's home, a shotgun blast is heard by the Winkler children. Mary takes the children away in the car on a sudden trip, with the children wondering what happened to their father. Concerned neighbors investigate the Winkler home that night, finding Matthew dead in a bedroom with a shotgun wound. Fearing the Winkler family has been kidnapped, the local and state authorities and FBI issues an Amber alert for the Winklers. Eventually a patrol car finds Mary and her children but they also find a shotgun in her car and apprehend Mrs. Winkler. Later the shotgun is identified as the murder weapon. At the station, Mary admits she may have shot her husband, which shocks the community and her parents-in-law. At first Mary refuses to divulge more about the incident and refuses to say anything negative about her husband. But her lawyer convinces her to reveal a darker, hidden side of Matthew.
Mary reveals that Matthew, despite his kind pastor image, was an angry and abusive man who engaged in physical and emotional abuse when she did something that angered him. She had never revealed this to anyone because her religious beliefs led her to silence. Matthew threatened to hurt or kill her to make her keep quiet. Mary also revealed Matthew tried to tax cheat the money she won in a lottery in order to pay their bills by having her put it in an account at another bank under her name. When the bank calls and asks her and her husband to meet them due to suspicions about the money, Mary tells Matthew about it on the night before he is murdered, but Matthew has no intention to follow her to the bank, citing since the account was under her name, it was her problem to deal with it. Mary refuses to reveal more of the abuses she suffered from Matthew to her lawyer, but upon learning her parents-in-law have not given her daughters her letters over what happened, making her eldest believe she murdered their father in cold blood, Mary finally reveals it in order to not lose custody of her daughters.
Mary reveals to the court that Matthew was a hypocrite who forced her to dress up like a hooker before they had sex and made her watch online pornography so they could reenact it even when she didn't want to. The years of abuse and financial situation was gaining its toll on Mary's mental state and what finally broke her was when hours before Matthew was killed, he tried to suffocate their baby daughter as he was unable to sleep due to the baby's cries. Unable to stand it any longer, in the early morning hours, Mary brings out the shotgun and pokes it on her sleeping husband at their bed to wake him up as she wanted to have a serious discussion with him about stopping the abuse. However, Mary was standing on a slippery rug which causes her to fall and accidentally pulls the trigger and shoots her husband. Upon realizing what she has done, a confused Mary decides to run away with her daughters. After this revelation, she tells the jury that despite the abuse she suffered, Mary still loves Matthew and never wanted to kill him, she just wanted him to stop mistreating her. After jury makes their decision, the jury finds Mary not guilty of murder but guilty of involuntary manslaughter, much to Mary's lawyers and supporters joy.
Throughout the film, various people who knew or met the Winklers are interviewed about their opinions of the case. While some refuse to believe that Matthew was an abusive man and Mary was guilty and got away with murder, others believe he was and Mary was innocent and was only defending herself and her children. Even Matthew's parents are interviewed who each have their different opinions. While his mother doesn't believe in Mary's story that Matthew was abusive, Matthew's father however believes he was but thinks Mary didn't kill Matthew accidentally but purposely as revenge and is willing to forgive her if she confesses the truth.

Review: The Pastor's wife.
I was a member of a Baptists church for over 2 years.
The Pastor's Wife portrays a fairly accurate account of the women in my church who firmly believe that the men in the family have the final say.
The wedding vows too are fairly accurate in as much as the 'love, honour and obey' that were originally 'standard' vows.
The pastor (or minister) in my church, although young was not (to my knowledge) violent, nor abusive.
However he had little or no knowledge of domestic abuse as he had been raised in a non-violent atmosphere.
His views were outdated though, because he constantly informed me that no matter how I was treated (or ill-treated), my role as wife was to be submissive, understanding and non-judgemental.
My ex treated me okay (in public) behind closed doors, I too was subjected to verbal abuse both by him and his parents.
The minister in my church did inform me that if I chose to 'abandon' the marriage, I too would be ostracized by the church.
I chose to leave and (as promised) was ostracized..
The last line in this movie makes it a certain winner!.
A riveting drama based on true events.Pastor with wife and kids seem to be the perfect family.
the wife shoots her husband to death.But there is more to the story then meets the eye...Rose McGowan gives a show stopping performance in this classily crafted and compelling real life drama:8/10..
I'm still not sure what to think of this one.
I'm still not sure what to think of this one.
It's trying really hard to be more than just another Lifetime movie about either a crazy woman who knocked off her husband or a male S.O.B. who got what he deserved when his wife shot him.
The film has a lot of good aspects, notably the way it establishes how the authoritarian beliefs of the Church of Christ conditioned the events -- how the husband could literally believe his wife should submit to him and meekly accept him even when he hit her for trivial reasons, and also why his dark side would reveal itself in surfing for porn on the Net and ultimately in making his wife dress like a hooker before he could have sex with her (all those religious hang-ups about sex being only to make babies, not to have fun!).
I also liked little bits like the woman prosecutor saying, when she receives notice that the wife and her attorney are going to present spousal abuse as a defense, "I wonder what took them so long." (Since the movie is already more than half over before this happens, I wonder what took screenwriter Robert Freedman and director Norma Bailey that long, too!) At the same time, there are just too many lapses into familiar Lifetime clichés for this to work as the atmospheric neo-noir it was clearly meant to be, and Rose McGowan simply looks too young to have been married for 13 years and have three children, the oldest a teenager.
(Then again they may have wanted a young-looking actress because Freedman's script contains a lot of flashbacks to when Matthew and Mary Winkler were dating and Mary was still just a teenager herself.) The story deserved a better movie, but this one isn't bad, and Michael Shanks is marvelously understated as Matthew even though Lifetime did the abused-wife schtick much better in "Black and Blue" (in which the authority figure the wife didn't dare report as a spousal abuse was a cop instead of a minister)..
lots of stereotypes.
As a member of the Church of Christ I have to disagree with the other reviewer.
There is no conditioning in the church for wives to be underlings and take abuse.
That is hogwash.
My mother is a preacher's wife and she is very strong and outspoken.
I also hated the scene of their wedding.
Those vows they said I have never in my life heard at a wedding.
That too was Hollywood hogwash.
I also noticed some of the background music made me think of Deliverance.
That's what Hollywood thinks of Southerners!
All our women barefoot and pregnant and the men chewing tobacco holding a shotgun.
I didn't really keep up with this trial, but I wonder how much conjecture and untruths were added to this film.
But, nobody but Mary knows the truth about what happened and evidently,the jury bought her story..
Surprisingly good Rose McGowan.
This true life case appeared in the news a lot - Mary Winkler a young mother of 3 daughters shot and killed her seemingly kind loving pastor husband in the back in bed.
She claimed abuse.
She got a very short sentence.
This puzzling case captured a lot of attention.Rose McGowan is convincing as the enigmatic Mary.
She looks shell shocked and is quite appropriately spaced out.
The blank stare looks a lot like what we have seen on the news.It's quite well done how they show the public witnessed version of events first and then gradually the alleged private version where the abuse took place.The murdered pastor Matthew Winkler is played by Michael Shanks who gives quite a convincing performance especially explosive in the alleged abuse situation.Leaves one with an unsettled feeling whether the abuse actually took place and he was a perverted abuser or she got too lightly away with murdering him in a huge miscarriage of justice.