November 27, 2009
Story of murder and forgiveness played out on Oprah program
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
Matthew “Eric” Wrinkles, the convicted killer of three people in Evansville in 1994, is scheduled to be executed by the State of Indiana Dec. 11.
Members of his family appeared on the Oprah Winfrey program Nov. 10 to tell their story and then to speak with Wrinkles by means of a satellite video connection linking Oprah’s studio with the prison where he is scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Kim, Eric’s niece
“I don’t want you to die because I don’t believe that someone should just take your life,” said Kim to her uncle during the video conversation. “God gave you that life and only he should take it. “You took something huge from me,” she said, but then concluded, “It’s not right to kill you. It’s just not right.”
Kim’s mother and father, Natalie and Tony Fulkerson, were two of Eric’s murder victims; the third was his own wife, Debbie.
Tracy, Debbie’s niece
Tracy, Debbie’s niece, was also in the home at the time. Ac-cording to text provided by the Oprah Winfrey show, Tracy says she was sleeping on the couch when Eric broke into the house. “Gunfire was coming from the bedroom,” she says. “The last thing I know is Natalie’s running over to the couch telling me to get up. I couldn’t get up off the couch. I was in shock. She said, ‘You have to get up.’”
Tracy says she didn’t want to leave the house without Natalie. As they heard Eric coming closer, Tracy says Natalie pushed her out the door. “She was protecting me from him because she said: ‘There he is. Go, get help,’” she says. “Natalie took the bullet that was meant for me. Natalie saved my life and gave hers up.”
In an effort to start healing, Tracy says she recently wrote Eric a letter. “I forgave Eric Wrinkles for killing my family,” she says. “It was time to start healing, and that’s where I wanted to start from . . . . I don’t want him to be out of prison, but I don’t want him on death row.”
Mary, Natalie’s mother
It was Tracy who contacted Oprah about her hope to see and to talk with Eric before his execution, according to Mary Winnecke.
Winnecke is Natalie’s mother and the grandmother who raised Natalie’s children, Kim and Matt. She is a staunch opponent of the death penalty and does not want the man who murdered her daughter to be put to death.
“You just can’t tell others to take a life,” Winnecke said in a telephone interview with the Message. “My daughter gave her life so that another could live.”
Eric’s letter to Kim and Matt
Kim is shown on video from the Oprah show, reading a letter from her uncle, written almost a year ago. In part, he said he hoped the letter would “convey my true sorrow, regrets and guilt to both of you for me being the person who took your father and mother away from you at such a young age and made you both orphans.”
He concluded, “God bless you both, take care, and please accept my deep apologies, shame and guilt for what I did to you both.”
The Oprah Winfrey show
“It was quite an experience,” said Mary Winnecke. “We went with God and God was there all the time.”
Winnecke is among the family members of the murdered victims of Eric Wrinkles who opposes the death penalty.
“I hope that whoever heard it [the Oprah program] heard the Holy Spirit,” she said in a telephone interview Nov. 18.
“I was able to tell Eric that I forgave him,” Winnecke said. She also asked him to ask for God’s forgiveness. “I told him to get on your knees, and Kim said the same thing.”
Kim is Winnecke’s granddaughter, who with her lttle brother Matt, was in the home during the killing rampage.
Kim seemed remarkably calm during the television taping, Winnecke said, and later ex-plained that she was able to relax when she saw her grandmother nearby with a rosary in her hand.
Winnecke brought another rosary with her, as a gift for Oprah. “I left the rosary with the producer. She promised that she would get it to her.”
She also brought Holy Water with her and took it out when she was in her dressing room. “I asked them, ‘Do you want some Holy Water?’ They did. I got to spray Holy Water on Oprah’s staff.”
The family members were flown to Chicago at Oprah’s expense, and hotel rooms were provided. Winnecke stayed with a relative, and all the guests were picked up by limo before the program taping.
The program producers had already done some of the work prior to the day of the taping. A crew had come to Evansville where they filmed Kim and Matt in the cemetery, at the graves of their parents. The crew also gathered public documents related to the police investigation and the arrest of Wrinkles.
Winnecke hopes the program will affect those who have seen it. Clips from the program, which aired Nov. 10, remain available on Oprah’s website.
“I just hope that people can hear the Holy Spirit and forgive others in their lives, and feel God’s peace,” she said.
The execution
Wrinkles has refused to petition for clemency, which was likely the last possible chance to avoid execution. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the prison in Michigan City, Ind., before dawn on Dec. 11.
Not everyone among the families of the victims agrees with those who have forgiven Wrinkles. The mother of Debbie and her brother Tony was also on the Oprah program. She expressed hatred for him and what he had done, and said his sentence should be carried out.
His refusal to bid for clemency, however, disappointed Winnecke.
“I had hoped to go before the governor and to ask him to [commute] the death penalty, and now I won’t get to do that,” she said.
Even so, “We need to write,” she said. “We need to write to stop the death penalty. It’s wrong.”