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Stories here are reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
HIV woman in court in Shelbyville
Husband shot with candy in hand on Halloween, wife arrested in Atoka
Newlywed charged with burning home to teach husband a lesson in Columbia
Nashville man dies after being burned with hot wax by his wife
Nashville woman charged with robbing ex-boyfriend after beating him in his wheelchair
Wife kills handicapped husband in Trenton
Coffee County wife shoots and kills husband
Wife's lover living in closet in Nashville home beats husband to death when discovered
Minister's wife confesses to murdering her husband in Selmer
Nashville wife describes altercation that left her husband dead
Saga of two dead husbands in Knoxville
Domestic violence officer accused of assaulting husband in Cookeville
August 19, 1998, Shelbyville (States News Service) — A woman accused of infecting twenty-three men with the deadly HIV virus faces a Marshall County judge this morning. Pam Wiser was jailed last month after being accused of having unprotected sex with men for revenge after testing positive for HIV.
November 4, 1998 (The Commercial Appeal) — An Atoka man said neither a trick nor a treat emerged when he answered a knock at the door on Halloween night, but he did get a gunshot wound to his shoulder from his wife.
Steven W. Lorimer, 26, told police he grabbed a jar of candy about 11:35 p.m. Saturday as he answered the door in the Commodore Apartments, 4528 Langley in Millington. He was visiting a relative there.
February 16, 1999 (AP) — A woman who police say wanted to teach her new husband a lesson about the dangers of smoking in bed was charged with burning down the house.
Linda Stewart, 39, put a lit cigarette on the couple's bed Sunday and left the house, police said.
"She admitted to intentionally starting the fire," Detective Mickey Jones said. "According to her, he had fallen asleep the night before and left a cigarette burning, and it burned a small area on the bed. So she said she was going to show him what could happen if she didn't catch it."
Her husband, Tim, was not home when the fire started about 10:30 AM. When he returned, the house was gutted.
Ms. Stewart was arrested on arson charges.
The Stewarts were married two months ago.
©2003 The Tennessean
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003, Nashville — Metro Police said they are investigating an unusual homicide, considering whether an east Nashville woman killed her husband with hot wax when the couple quarreled over $15.
The case got the attention of authorities when J.B. Marina, 60, called for an ambulance to come to his home on Forrest Avenue on July 6, Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron said.
"When the officer arrived he was being loaded into the ambulance and he told the officer that the severe burns to his groin, stomach, legs and hip were caused by his wife during an argument on July 1st," Aaron said. "He told the patrol officer that his wife burned him with hot wax."
He also told the officer that it happened during an argument about $15, Aaron said.
He said he did not know why the man waited five days before talking to police or seeking medical attention.
The victim's wife, Patsy Marina, 55, told police she did not burn her husband and did not know how he was wounded. However, Aaron said police still charged the woman with aggravated assault July 6.
On July 11, Metro's medical examiner's office notified police that Marina had died from complications from his burns.
"There were other medical issues involved, but the medical examiner's office reported to us he would not have died had he not been burned," Aaron said.
The wife is in jail in lieu of $8,000 bail, police said. Police are now investigating the case as a homicide.
© 2004 The Tennessean
Sunday, March 21, 2004 — A 20-year-old Nashville woman was in jail last night, charged with stealing a wheel off her ex-boyfriend's wheelchair after beating him last summer.
According to the affidavit charging her with aggravated robbery, Michael Gaines was sitting in his wheelchair on Vaughn Street near Fifth Street in east Nashville talking to another woman on June 28, 2003.
His ex-girlfriend, Antoinette Hall, walked up, pushed his wheelchair over and began hitting him.
"She then struck (Gaines) with a whiskey bottle in the head and took his money," the affidavit says. "She also took one of the wheels off (Gaines') wheelchair and fled the scene."
She was booked into custody Friday and being held in Metro Jail in lieu of $75,000 bond. There was no explanation of why the charges against Ms. Hall were so long delayed.
July 15, 2004 (AP) — A 58-year-old wife who said her disabled husband was about to leave her for another woman has been convicted of murdering him.
Annie Powell drew a life sentence Tuesday for shooting her husband, Eddie, in the neck with a shotgun last summer.
Powell said her husband of 14 years, who used a wheelchair, had threatened to kill her and leave her for another woman.
"What? I'm supposed to let my mind go out of order?" she testified on the witness stand. "I didn't know what to do."
The jury that convicted Ms. Powell of first-degree murder decided against choosing the lesser crimes of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, which would have meant the killing was a crime of passion.
© 2004 WKRM.com News2
October 24, 2004 — A woman killed her husband right in front of the couple's three children. The woman — apparently fearing for her life — opened fire on her husband Friday night in a home just outside Manchester in Coffee County.The pair reportedly had a history of domestic troubles.
Zandria Arp had just gotten off the phone with Stephanie Foster when the incident occurred.
"She said all she could think of is that he was fixing to kill her and the kids. That's what he told her he was fixing to do," said Arp.
Arp says she had just opened up her second home to Foster and her three children as they tried to escape the violence. She knew Stephanie had filed an order of protection against her husband. But on Friday night, despite that protection order, 32-year-old Alfred Eugene Foster, made his way down Bob Meadows Road in northern Coffee County and slipped into their safe haven.
"And he came in and pulled the gun and said, 'Either you shoot me or I'm shooting myself and the three kids. I don't care no more,'" said Arp.
Coffee County authorities say Foster physically assaulted his wife in front of their three children — ages 6, 5 and 3 — then threatened to kill them with a .38 caliber handgun.
Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves says Stephanie Foster told him, "he threw it on the bed and told her that if she didn't kill him that he was gonna kill her, the kids, then himself."
27-year-old Stephanie Foster told friends and authorities she feared what her husband would do but didn't believe the gun was loaded.
Zandria Arp says Stephanie Foster said, "She kept telling him, 'I know you ain't got no bullets in it, you ain't that stupid.'"
Sheriff Graves added, "Stephanie said she really didn't think the gun was loaded but she pointed it at him and pulled the trigger once."
Coffee County authorities said that Alfred Foster suffered a bullet wound to the center of the chest. While the investigation is not over, Sheriff Steve Graves says there's a reason Mrs. Foster was not arrested. "It appears as is right now it's going to be a justifiable shooting."
April 12, 2005 (AP) — A Nashville husband was beaten to death after catching his wife's lover living in a closet in their home, police said Tuesday. Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey A. Freeman over the weekend.
Freeman's wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom home for about a month without her husband's knowledge, police said. On Sunday, her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him, authorities said.
Freeman ordered his wife to get the man out of the house while he went for a walk, authorities said. Martha Freeman told authorities that when her husband returned, Rocha-Perez confronted him with a shotgun, forced him into a bathroom and bludgeoned him.
The Freemans were co-owners of a company that does background checks for apartment rental and job applicants.
March 22, 2006 (AP) —A minister's wife confessed to shooting her husband to death in the parsonage in a crime that shocked the congregation in Selmer, a town of about 4,600 in western Tennessee, and shattered the couple's surficially happy and loving image.
Mary Winkler, 32, was arrested on murder charges and confessed to the slaying after fleeing to a beach resort in Alabama in the family's minivan with the couple's three young daughters, authorities said. She agreed to be returned to Tennessee and waived extradition.
Her husband of 10 years, Matthew Winkler, a popular and charismatic 31-year-old preacher at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, was found dead in a bedroom at the couple's home the night of March 22, 2006, after he missed a Wednesday evening service.
After a daylong search, Mary Winkler and her daughters were found Thursday night leaving a restaurant in Orange Beach, Alabama, about 340 miles from home. Orange Beach Police Chief Billy Wilkins said she had rented a condo on the beach after the slaying.
According to news reports Mrs. Winkler had become involved in an online Nigerian check-kiting scheme involving thousands of dollars. She was kiting checks between five different accounts in two banks in order to cover her financial difficulties.
Apparently she quarreled with her husband the night of March 21, 2006, about the financial problems. After a restless night, when the alarm went off at 6 or 6:30 AM, Mary got out of bed, went to a closet and got a 12-gauge shotgun that Matthew used for turkey hunting. She then shot him in the back from a distance of a few feet. The blast from the shotgun knocked him out of bed. It wasn't determined whether Matthew was still asleep when she shot him but it reportedly took him 20 minutes to die, during which he asked
"Why?"
Mary then calmly packed up their three children, and the shotgun, and fled in the family's minivan. She had withdrawn $500 in several transactions the day before the murder apparently to finance her getaway.
She refused to aid him or call 911 as he slowly bled to death for 20 minutes and Matthew was still alive when she left.
A hearing was held on whether the three girls — Breanna, 1; Mary Alice, 6; and Patricia, 8 — could return to Tennessee with their paternal grandparents. Mary Winkler, who stands 5-foot-3 and weighs 120 pounds, was led into the hearing but did not respond to questions from reporters.
Matthew Winkler was hired at the 200-member church in February 2005. The congregation quickly came to love his by-the-book sermons, said Wilburn Ash, an elder.
Church members also took to his wife, whom they described as a quiet, unassuming woman who was a substitute teacher at an elementary school.
Mary and Matthew Winkler were married in 1996. They had met at Freed-Hardeman University, a Church of Christ-affiliated school in Henderson where Matthew's father was an adjunct professor. Mary took education classes, and Matthew took Bible classes. Neither graduated.
Mary Winkler was released on $750,000 bail in August 2006 and remained free until her trial in April 2007.
Following her arrest, she made no accusations of abuse against her husband, nor was there any public record of domestic violence in the family. But at her trial Mrs. Winkler told jurors that her husband, Matthew, abused her physically and sexually. As proof, she showed the jury a pair of platform shoes and black wig that Matthew had asked her to wear during sex. [Yes, a black wig and high heels – that's what counts for domestic violence these days.] Prosecution witnesses described Matthew Winkler as a good husband and father and the couple's 9-year-old daughter testified she never saw her father mistreat her mother. Mary Winkler also said under cross-examination that her husband did nothing for which he deserved to die.
She also testified that she did not pull the trigger and the shotgun went off accidentally as she pointed it at him. The prosecution said it was ludicrous to suggest the shooting was an accident.
A female psychologist testified that Mary Winkler could not have formed the intent to commit a crime because of her compromised mental condition. Dr. Lynne Zager said Mrs. Winkler suffered from mild depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which started at age 13 when her sister died and got worse because her husband abused her. The disorder made it more likely that Mary Winkler would have "dissociative episodes" in which she lost track of her ability to think and feel, as though she were living in a fog, Zager said.
Mary Winkler was convicted April 19, 2007, of voluntary manslaughter for shooting her husband in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun as he lay in bed. Prosecutors had asked that Winkler be convicted of first-degree murder, but the jury settled on the lesser charge after deliberating for just eight hours. The jury included two men and 10 women, including one who said she had been a victim of domestic abuse.
On June 8, 2007, she was sentenced to 210 days in prison, with credit given for 143 days she had spent in jail the previous year before making bail. The judge allowed her to spend 60 of the remaining 67 days of her sentence in a mental health facility.
So her cold-blooded murder basically warranted only a seven-month sentence — two of them in a mental health facility that features campfire sing-alongs and foot massages.
Since her release Mary Winkler has been in a custody battle with Matthew Winkler's parents, who have been raising the three girls since the murder. The Winklers sought to terminate Mary Winkler's parental rights and adopt the girls. Mary Winkler was granted supervised visits with her daughters in 2007. Sadly, she has gained back custody of the three girls, which is clearly not in the girls' best interests. In an unexpected turn of events, she regained physical custody of her three children on August 1, 2008. Winkler picked the girls up that afternoon and brought them to her new home in McMinnville, Tennessee. She will soon enroll them in local schools.
Matthew's parents, Dan and Diane Winkler, had custody of the girls since 2006 and have been trying to adopt them. "These young ladies have not expressed any desire to be with their mother or her family," Dan Winkler said in 2007.
The Winkler's had filed appeals in an effort to stop Mary Winkler from having supervised visits and phone calls with her daughter. But now they have turned over custody to the girls' murdering mother. It is unclear why the Winkler's suddenly turned over custody of the girls.
This is being called the first step to full custody for mary Winkler, although no official court order has been filed. One can only imagine the trauma and lifetime burden placed on these children by their mother and the courts who have placed them back in her homicidal care.
© 2007 by Matt Pordum, Court TV
March 28, 2007 — People always told Hope Mercer that she would "end up dead" if she remained married to Joseph Mercer III.
She explained this to a police detective on a videotaped interview within hours of her husband's shooting death.
Prosecutors contend Hope Mercer was never at risk of being killed by her husband, a prominent Nashville personal injury lawyer. Instead, they say, she knowingly shot and killed Joseph Mercer, 53, with a .22-caliber handgun during a fight at their home in the suburbs of Nashville on April 16, 2005.
On Wednesday, the jury that will ultimately decide whether Hope Mercer, 34, is guilty of second-degree murder viewed more than four hours of her videotaped statements to Nashville Metro Police Detective Robert Anderson.
Between extended periods of crying, Hope Mercer, still wearing her white bathrobe in the hours after the shooting, detailed the events surrounding her husband's death and their troubled marriage.
She told Anderson that, after having dinner with her mother, she returned to the couple's home at midnight, took an herbal sleep aid, locked her bedroom door and fell asleep.
She explained that her husband had decided it was time to file the divorce papers they signed weeks earlier, and the couple had spent the week sleeping in separate beds.
The next thing she remembered, she said, was that Joseph Mercer "broke the lock and busted through the door."
"He was mad I was out late and he mumbled something about being out late with a boyfriend," Mercer told Anderson. "He's been mad at me all week."
She said her husband screamed, "You need to get out of the house tonight."
Before he would allow her to leave, he demanded that she turn over the keys to the Jaguar he had bought for her.
"He said, 'You need to buy yourself your own car, because we're not married anymore,'" Hope Mercer told Anderson. "He wanted to take the car away to punish me."
Her husband then began throwing her jewelry, clothes and purses out of the closet, determined to find her car keys, she said. When Hope Mercer finally told him the keys were in her purse, he retrieved them and left the room.
Joseph Mercer returned several minutes later, pulled the covers off her and "threw a suitcase by the bed and basically told me I need to get up and pack because I was leaving tonight," she said.
She went into the closet because her husband was "tearing it apart."
When she turned the corner, she said Joseph Mercer was holding a gun.
Hope Mercer told the detective she repeatedly asked her husband, "Why do you have a gun? Is that a gun?"
When he put the gun on a dresser inside the closet, Hope Mercer said, she picked it up or put her hand on it.
Her husband slapped at the gun, she said, causing it to fire. Joseph McGuire fell backward onto the floor.
When Anderson asked Hope Mercer to help re-enact the incident with him playing the role of Joseph Mercer, she showed the detective that she fell backward after the gun went off.
She then collected herself and turned to the detective, saying, "And you're dead, you're dead."
Hope Mercer told Anderson that she was a victim of verbal and physical abuse. Specifically, she said, her husband had punched her in the stomach, pushed her down the stairs and thrown her against a wall during their two years of marriage.
Despite filing for a protective order against Joseph Mercer and also signing divorce papers in the weeks before their final fight, Hope Mercer said she still loved her husband and didn't believe he would ever shoot her.
She said she continually held out hope that, through marriage counseling, they'd be able to stay together.
When Anderson asked a series of questions exploring whether she stood to gain financially from either a divorce or her husband's death, Hope Mercer said she wouldn't get a dime.
She said the couple had a prenuptial agreement that left her nothing if they separated and she was not a beneficiary of his will.
Abstracted from AP report and story by Martha Woodward, Knoxville Journal
December 13 - 19, 2007 — From the time of the death of Ed Dossett in 1992, his wife, Raynella Dossett-Leath, has lived under a cloud of suspicion. Blogs and web sites are full of unkind comments which serve to make a sensational story, but, what is truth and what is opinion?
Since this story has been years in the making, let's review some of the major points that are known to be true:
Raynella Large and Ed Dossett were students at East Tennessee State University. Raynella was a member of the Rifle Team, and is an excellent marksman. While at ETSU, she studied nursing and went on to have a successful career as a nurse and nurse administrator. Ed studied law and went on to rise to heights as District Attorney General for Knox County. They were married in 1970 and were parents to three children, Maggie, Ed II, (now deceased), and Katie.
Ed Dossett, well-known as a "good old country boy," was elected as Attorney General in 1982, and re-elected in 1990, serving until his death at age 44 in 1992. He was a popular and effective AG.
During his last weeks on earth, he was so sick from cancer he was on a permanent morphine drip. His family was saddened as they watched the robust lawyer, who had weighed as much as 270 pounds, shrink to 120 pounds.
He died in the barnyard on the farm that he loved, reportedly stomped to death by the cattle he raised. He was found dead in the pasture with his breastbone and some of his ribs broken. There was a hoof print on the chest of his overalls. Investigators at the time concluded he had been knocked down and trampled to death by his cattle. Raynella told authorities that her husband was so weak that she had to help him to the pasture, where he wanted to see and feed his cattle. She said that when she returned later she found him lying there dead.
No X-rays were taken of Dossett's head and neck at the time and his morphine pump was not detected in the initial autopsy. But the toxicology report "...showed a level of morphine that is so extraordinarily high it is unlikely that any human could function in an ambulatory manner or continue to live."
The fact that his death was ruled as "accidental" at the time allowed his wife, then age 44, to collect double the amount from his life insurance policy.
Fifteen years later, and after her second husband was murdered, investigators have a new theory that Ed Dossett was drugged and then placed underfoot among the cattle to make it look like an accident. They suspect his widow, now awaiting trial on charges of murdering her second husband, of arranging the "accident."
Next, in 1993, less than a year after Ed's death, Mrs. Dossett married David Leath, who had been Ed's best friend since their youth. This marriage lasted for 10 years, ending in March 2003 when the former barber was found by Raynella, then 55, in their home in the couple's bed, dead from a gunshot wound. An autopsy found painkillers and antidepressants in his system that had not been prescribed. The death was, eventually, ruled a homicide.
Three shots were fired from a gun owned by Mr. Leath's aged mother. The holster for the weapon was located in the home of Mr. Leath's mother and turned over to the investigators by Cindy Wilkerson, daughter of Mr. Leath. Mrs. Wilkerson has made it plain that she thinks Mrs. Raynella Dossett-Leath is responsible for the death of her father.
From 2003 until 2007, the case seemed to have gone cold. The man who replaced Ed Dossett as Attorney General, Randy Nicholas, excused himself from the case, which then passed through several hands before being assigned to Steve Bebb, 10 th District Attorney General from Cincinnati. The investigation moved forward recently with an arrest warrant for premeditated murder for Raynella Dossett-Leath, now age 59. She quickly made bond and was released from jail. She is set to stand trial in February 2008.
The former Attorney General and is buried on the grounds of the family's 168 acre farm which is located in the Solway Community. Investigators have recently requested an exhumation of Ed Dossett's body in order to perform another autopsy. In asking to exhume Dossett's body, prosecutors said in court papers that there was "evidence of drug overdose in both victims," both deaths occurred "under highly suspicious circumstances," and in both cases there was a similar motive of "greed."
Abstracted from articles in NewsChannel5.com and the Herald-Citizen
August 25, 2008 — A Putnam County woman faces charges of assaulting her husband. The irony is that Mrs. Kim Keith is the domestic violence officer with the Putnam County Sheriff's Office. Since 2003, if there's been a domestic violence case in the county, more than likely Mrs. Keith has investigated it. But now she's on the other side of the law and suspended from her job.
Deputy Kim Keith, 33, of 936 Shannon Drive, spent 12 hours in a jail cell following her arrest by Deputy Sgt. David Gibbons, according to Sheriff David Andrews.
The warrant that Deputy Sgt. Gibbons took out in the case reads as follows:
"I responded to Shannon Drive to take a report from Michael Keith. Upon arrival, I spoke with Mr. Keith who stated that he and his wife, Kimberly Keith, had gotten into an argument because he had not called her from work. He stated that he was about done with the marriage because of all the verbal abuse.
She followed him from the bedroom to the living room. She stated that she was the law and knew the law and was going to take him down. She lunged at him, hitting him face to face. He then stated 'I am leaving.' He stated, 'Kim, that is an assault.'
She followed him outside. She stated she was going to call the law. She then picked up the phone and pretended to call the police. He told her she needed to dial the phone if she was going to call the police. She then swung at him, hitting him on the left side of the neck. There are visible signs of red marks on the left side of the neck."
Deputy Sgt. Gibbons and Deputy Tony Branch worked the case and brought Kim Keith to the Putnam jail, where she was booked and her bond set at $500.
"Absolutely not," Mrs. Keith said when asked if she has ever shoved or physically assaulted her husband. However, a police report states that her husband told investigators that she assaulted him.
"My husband and I got into an argument," is what she claims. "I would just like to say that I didn't do all of what I'm accused of doing," Mrs. Keith said. "I'd just like to get it taken care of and clear my name...He did push me. He left and went to a chiropractor appointment." Kim said her husband was never treated at a hospital for any injuries. She also said he waited five hours to summon police after the initial fight on Friday.
Mrs. Keith insisted that her husband is trying to get back at her because she wanted out of the marriage.
Putnam County Sheriff David Andrews said he takes the charges seriously and he put Mrs. Keith on unpaid administrative leave, took her gun and patrol car. "The fact that she's an officer, the fact that she got arrest is enough for me." She was placed on unpaid administrative leave.
"We'll see what happens in court," the sheriff said. "I have to, as the sheriff, as the administrator here, look at the total circumstance. When this is all over with, I'll make a decision as to what we do from there."
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