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Mary Winkler: The Secret Pictures

For more than 10 months now, the world has been captivated by Mary Winkler.

She's the preacher's wife charged with killing her husband.

Now, a new side of Winkler.

Since August, Winkler has lived and worked in McMinnville, Tennessee.

McMinnville is a small town, around 13-thousand people.

It's about four hours away from the Selmer home where prosecutors say she shot and killed her husband Matthew last March.

Mary Winkler spends her days working in a dry cleaners, but it's how she spends her night that many say is behavior unbecoming of a preacher's wife.

For months, Mary Winkler has lived the life of the accused.

Out on bond and working at a dry cleaners.

It's just one way Winkler bides time while waiting for judgment on charges she killed her preacher husband with a shotgun blast to the back last March.

But working at Cleaners Express isn't the only way Winkler stays busy.

One picture shows her bellied up to a bar, cigarette in hand, and a bottle of beer in front of her.

Picture after picture shows the same thing.

Luis Correa says he was shocked when he saw Winkler sitting across the bar from him and his wife.

He took pictures with his cell phone.

"She was, you know, having a good time, with everybody in the bar," says Correa.

It's a far cry from the meek widow we saw protected by her attorneys the day she bonded out of jail in McNairy County.

Winkler's been living and working in McMinnville ever since.

It's part of her pre-trial supervision, and apparently it's not all work and no play.

"I think perhaps, maybe, she exercised some poor judgment," says Libby St. John.

St. John is Correa's wife.

She says she recognized Winkler at the bar because she'd seen her on the front page of the paper the very same day.

It was New Year's Eve and McMinnville's most popular downtown hangout had a special guest.

"She was smoking and drinking and appeared to be pretty light-hearted," says St. John, "I would be too upset about being separated from my children, that sort of thing, to be able to go out and celebrate in such a fashion."

St. John says the encounter has given her second thoughts about the woman she once pitied, "I think it's important for other people to see who they're supporting."

Members at McMinnville's Central Church of Christ have given Winkler money while she awaits trial.

The editor of McMinnville's "Southern Standard", James Clark, says others have given Winkler gifts and jewelry.

"People seemed to have opened their arms to her, for whatever reason," says Clark.

Correa believes his cell phone pictures may change things, "And I don't know if the people in the congregation still support her, but they got to know where they spend their money."

On the night in question, witnesses say, it was at a bar near McMinnville's town square.

The owner of the New York grill, where those pictures were taken, says Winkler has had drinks at the bar three of four times over the past few months.

According to a patron, Mary Winkler celebrated her birthday there.

Winkler did sign a pre-trial supervision order, agreeing not to drink alcohol in excess or enter an establishment that primarily sells alcoholic beverages.

The New York Grill is licensed as a restaurant, and Winkler's probation officer says it doesn't appear she broke any rules of supervision.  

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Mary Winkler: The Secret Pictures

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