16 April 2007
Sad day
My prayers go out to the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. I seriously considered going to school there. If you have friends or family in that area and the phone lines are jammed up, use text messages as they are more likely to be able to go through.
That said, we now turn our attention to Matthew and Mary Winkler. Names don’t sound familiar? Matthew was a pastor at a church, and his wife Mary shot him in the back while he slept with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing him.
Today on CNN there is a report about the court case for the charges brought against her and it really broke my heart. According to witness testimony, Mary had been engaging in check kiting, which is basically trying to “float” money between banks using checks, as a means of preventing them from being overdrawn. It takes advantage of the several-day processing time that checks traditionally had. As the Wikipedia article notes, it’s likely going to be a thing of the past as digital image processing allows checks to be deposited the same-day as the transaction.
Anyway, while the prosecutor and defense attorney obviously put their own spin on this, the fact remains - she was at very minimum stressed over financial concerns that were hidden, and it was at least a contributing factor to the murder. It also notes, “Freeland said Thursday in his opening statement that the couple’s finances, which were handled by the wife, were in ’shambles.’ Mary Winkler, he said, had been cashing fraudulent checks sent to her by con artists overseas. She had set up accounts in various banks and was creating false balances by juggling funds between them, he added.”
Now… I’m all for personal responsibility as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t excuse the actions of scammers praying on the naive/financially uneducated. I hope this sad type of story can all the more spurn us on to get our finances in order.
My guess is that being a pastor, the husband didn’t earn a whole lot of cash. The wife received some fraudulent checks in the mail, probably guaranteeing some amazing deal, while in reality having horrible fees and penalties tacked on. She doesn’t tell her husband, ends up having to pick and choose which bills to pay. She begins taking calls from creditors asking for their money. Her husband may question her about it, but she handles the money so she just blows him off. Eventually, she can’t deal with it, snaps, and kills her husband.
I’m not saying that she isn’t responsible. Obviously, something besides just debt was the problem. But debt and financial worries certainly exasperated the concern.
As an interesting sidenote, I was looking at the Wikipedia article for the Virginia Tech shootings, and it linked to the Bath School disaster of 1927, which is the worst school killing in U.S. history.
The event killed 45 children, and here’s a snippet from it:
“The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.” [emphasis added]
