Mark Winger

Mark Winger (born November 26, 1962), a former Springfield, Illinois nuclear power-plant technician, was convicted in 2002 of murdering his wife, Donnah Winger, an operating room technician, and Roger Harrington (born 1967), in 1995. Winger married the former Donnah Brown (born 1963) in 1988.^[1] He is a first cousin of actor Debra Winger.

Synopsis of murders

Following a trip from Florida to visit her mother and stepfather, Donnah Winger had taken a 90-minute ride home from St. Louis International airport driven by shuttle van driver Roger Harrington on the early afternoon of 23 August 1995. Allegedly psychotic, the driver reportedly gave her a "hard time" during the ride, supposedly talking about getting high and having orgies in his home.

Some days later, Mark Winger called 911 to report he shot Harrington to death, not knowing who he was, upon catching him bludgeoning Donnah to death with a hammer. The case was declared closed at first, but on closer examination it was discovered that the husband appeared as the only possible culprit and that he had killed Harrington before he murdered his wife, after luring him into the house.

Double murder

Police were told Harrington, who had a history of mental problems, gave Donnah Winger a harrowing ride home from the St. Louis airport, and scared her and their child, a 3-month old the Wingers had adopted a month and a half earlier. Reportedly, she told her husband about the incident several days before her death.

Police speculated that Harrington, who had been involved in a domestic dispute with his ex-wife some years ago, broke into the house and beat Donnah Winger to death with a hammer. The Wingers initially had contacted the taxi shuttle service where Harrington was employed, and complained about the ride from the airport.

Springfield Police Det. Doug Williamson, the interviewing detective in Wingers initial questioning wasn't persuaded of Winger's innocence. However, because he was a rookie, his opinion was not given large consideration. His partner, Det. Charlie Cox, was initially convinced by Winger's report but said that he "became suspicious" when Winger kept showing up at the police station, a pattern that began a few months after the murders occurred when Winger came by to ask for his gun back. The two detectives then began to suspect Winger of double murder.

Detective Cox recalls:

I released the gun back to Mark and we sat and talked for about a half hour,” Cox said. "He was wanting to know how the case was going. As far as I was concerned, he should have just accepted it was closed.” ^[2]

Although Winger would deny it, Cox also remembered him dropping by a second time, to say he was getting remarried to his daughter’s new nanny, whom he hired five months after Donnah died.

“He kept coming in. I kept feeling like he was trying to find out if we were checking into anything,” said Cox. “I went back to Doug and said, ‘Something’s wrong here. Big time."

Winger reportedly told Springfield Police detectives he ran up from the basement, grabbed a gun, and shot Harrington in defense, after he saw him over his dead wife, who was lying on the living room floor. But police later developed evidence determining Harrington was set up as part of Winger's plan to murder his wife, based on the positioning of the bodies the police discovered at the crime scene. They didn't add up to WInger's account of a supposed struggle with Harrington, as well as the evidence discoveries in Harrington's car which pointed to a possible appointment for 4:30 PM that afternoon with Winger and his wife.

Trial

Until he was finally arraigned in 2001, life had gone on with Winger. He married Rebecca Handity, the family nanny he had hired after the death of Donnah. The new couple added three more children, two of which were adopted into the new family, which included Bailey, the infant Winger had adopted with Donnah.

Evidence and testimonies

At the start of the trial, all of the forensic evidence, including DNA samples, and the video interviews by Winger with the detectives assigned to the case was introduced. Also introduced were a post-it reminder note in Harrington's car of the planned meeting between the cab driver Harrington and the Wingers; dispatch documents for the airport shuttle service for whom Harrington worked; recorded conversations between Winger and the driver of the possible meeting later that afternoon on the day of the murders; and, probably most damning for Winger, three Polaroid photo shots of the victims at the crime scene that disproved Winger's testimony of shooting Harrington as he knelt over Donnah's unconscious body. Testimony from paramedics also contradicted Winger's statement that he had held his wife while waiting for the paramedics. The paramedics testified that they found Donnah face down.

Also introduced were the murder weapon, a gun detectives had believed Winger used to shoot and kill Harrington, and the hammer Winger alleged Harrington had used to bludgeon Donnah. Police believed that Winger, not Harrington, used the hammer to kill Winger's wife. Testimony from acquaintances of the Wingers was presented; in particular, DeAnn Schultz, one of Donnah's best friends, would reveal she had been having an affair with Mark at the time of the murders. She testified Winger had made what she thought were incriminating comments to her, and that Winger wanted out of his marriage so badly that he tried to solicit her on the murder plot beforehand. Schultz also claimed he made incriminating comments to her such as, "It would be better if she died."

Verdict

On 29 May 2002, after three weeks of testimony and 13 hours of deliberation, a jury found Winger guilty of first-degree murder in the beating death of his wife Donnah, and the fatal shooting of Harrington. Winger was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murders.^[3][4] It had taken six and a half years for the case to finally make it to trial.

Solicitation for murder

In 2006, Winger, then 48, was indicted for attempting to hire a fellow prisoner to commit another murder for him. Winger allegedly tried to solicit a Pontiac prison inmate, Terry Hubbell, then 44, to arrange the murders of Schultz, who was his girlfriend and mistress at the time of his wife's and Harrington's death, and a childhood friend, Jeffrey Gelman, a wealthy real estate developer living in Florida at the time, and whom Winger also allegedly felt had slighted him.

The plot originally sought that Hubbell, who was at the time serving natural life for the 1983 murder of a 14-year-old girl, Angel Greenwood, in the nearby town of Olney, would arrange for hit men to kidnap Gelman, who allegedly offended Winger when he wouldn't post his US$1,000,000 bail in the Sangamon County case, then obtain a large ransom in exchange for not harming his family. As time progressed, the ransom plot was changed to murder Gelman and Schultz, who would testify against Winger in the murder for hire trial. The ransom money was to supposedly be used to pay the killer for the deaths of both Gelman and DeAnn Schultz.

Verdict

The fallout of the plot resulted in Winger's conviction in June 2007 for solicitation to commit murder. He was found guilty by jury in a Livingston County, Illinois trial, where a 35-year sentence was added to the life without parole sentence he received in the Sangamon County murders.^[5] Winger is currently incarcerated in Menard Correctional Center.

In the media

The CSI: NY episode "Open and Shut" is based on the Winger case, but with the sexes of the victims reversed: the wife kills the husband and frames his psychopathic driver. In December 2008, CBS News's 48 Hours program ran an update on the story of the Winger murder case, which was also later aired on the cable WE tv Channel's 48 Hours On We program.^[6]

The case was most recently in the media in July 2012 during an episode of ABC's Final Witness.^[7]

References

External links

• CBSNews Invitation to a murder
• trutv Murder by the book, murder by deception