His Heart Will Go On
(“A Welcome Intrusion,” Forensic Files)
In recent prison mugshots, Mark Winger looks more like a department-store Santa or an organic food co-op manager than a killer.
It seems that the onetime nuclear engineer from Springfield, Illinois, has lost just about everything except hope.
Two of the last three blog posts, starting with Mark Winger: No Great Catch, cover his life from his days as a small-town father and husband with a $72,000-a-year job to his time spent orchestrating the double-homicide and murder-for-hire plots that ultimately landed him in supermax for life.
Conspicuous consumption. Winger’s story left off in 2007, when a judge rejected his contention that he’s just a lovable victim. Winger explained that he was merely managing his anger when he did such things as verbalize his desire to cut out DeAnn Schultz’s tongue (and that’s just the tamer part of his reverie regarding his ex-girlfriend) for testifying against him.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Target
Walmart
Indie Bound
This week’s post offers a glimpse of Winger’s existence since then, in an update to the Forensic Files episode “A Welcome Instrusion.“
Although audio tapes captured Winger complaining about becoming ill from a “meat sandwich” served in prison, it looks as though he’s been able to find ample culinary delights.
The 5-foot-10-inch formerly small-framed prisoner now weighs in at 215 pounds, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections, which also notes he has an eagle tattoo on his left leg.
Winger tried to make the most of his time in captivity by mounting a legal fight over where he can exercise. His litigation in its various incarnations dragged on for years.
The prison, Tamms Correctional Center (he was later moved to Menard), had not been allowing him to exercise outside his cell. He alleged that forcing him to stay in his concrete-walled bachelor pad all day constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Winger also contended that Illinois law restricted such limitations to 90 days.
Exercising authority. At some point during his incarceration, he also complained that running in place and doing jumping jacks in his cell caused his knees to hit the wall or bunk, sit-ups made his bed too sweaty, and the floor was too dirty for push-ups.
Back in 2006, Winger had contended that his exclusion from the exercise yard caused him “physical illness, depression, and panic attacks.”
Court papers noted that intent is essential for liability under the Eighth Amendment and there was no indication of malice toward Winger and no evidence the exercise restrictions caused his alleged psychological problems.
In 2013, a Chicago U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that defeated Winger’s suit. That seems to be the last of Winger’s efforts to shake things up from his home in a maximum security institution.
Professor’s insight. In other Winger-related news, I stumbled upon some interesting academic research online that suggested that, in some ways, Mark Winger’s case was typical of husbands who kill.
In “Monstrous Arrogance: Husbands Who Choose Murder Over Divorce,” Davidson College professor Cynthia Lewis identifies a number of ways in which Mark Winger’s actions after the crime fit a typical pattern. Winger:
1) Used the 911 call as a means of setting up his alibi. “I found this man in my house,” Winger told the operator. He also claimed his baby was crying as an excuse to get off the phone so he could shoot Roger Harrington again.
2) Visited the police to find out how the investigation was going, despite that he was not originally considered a suspect. Other wife killers, Lewis notes, have tended to check in with neighbors and family members to see what they know about the progress of the investigation. “He’s fishing for clues about suspicion toward himself,” according to the author.
3) Capitalized on his loss to gain sympathy. Winger took “his sense of injury one step beyond emotional loss to financial gain,” Lewis writes. Indeed, he profited by Donnah Winger’s $150,000 life insurance payout. “But even more pronounced about Winger — and a major element tying together spousal murders that circumvent divorce — is the arrogance he displayed in suing Harrington’s company [Bootheel Area Rapid Transportation], a move perhaps related to cultivating the image of the bereaved husband,” Lewis concludes.
Talking points. So it seems the man of science who thought he was smart enough to annihilate — without consequences — those who stood in his way, is in many aspects just a typical violent criminal with more in common with his 3,203 fellow Menard inmates than he probably likes to think.
One more note: The Perfect Patsy by Edward Cunningham contains transcripts of Winger’s conversations with Pontiac Correctional Center inmate Terry Hubbell. Some of the book’s content is available free online.
As murder-for-hire dialogues go, these are actually a little tiresome to plow through. They’re riddled with repetition and passages noting unintelligible spans of tape. But there’s enough incriminating conversation to ease the minds of any folks still worried that Winger is just a good guy victimized by the system. — RR
Note: This concludes a four-part series on Mark Winger. To read the earlier posts, you can go to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Target
Walmart
Indie Bound
Re: his complaint that there isn’t enough room in his cell to exercise, I think it says in the Constitution that he is entitled to a Swedish personal fitness trainer. Hair implants, too. Obviously, he has the authorities by the short hairs.
Good piece. Respectfully let me suggest that no matter how heinous the crime, confinement conditions are often barbarous in this country. No one is saying that he deserves a country club. Instead, let’s agree that the way a society treats its most vulnerable is a measure of the society itself.
I agree. I’m a fan of incarceration as a means for preventing criminals from reoffending and also giving victims’ families satisfaction. No need for suffering, other than loss of freedom, on the part of the prisoners.
As someone who believes incarcerated felons deserve what they get, your point is taken. Many prisoners don’t need a gulag or some horrific slime pit prison in Bolivia or Thailand, and as we have seen on FF several times *some* prisoners are actually innocent.
Even so there are 330mil plus people in this country.
A %age of them will commit crimes hence the challenge of managing a nationwide prison population exceeding that of some country’s entire populations.
This has to be done efficiently, effectively and at low cost. Murderers like this clown have lost the right to many privileges we have. He’s there for punishment and as an example to others. Our prisons are not happy places, never meant to be. Some small Scandinavian countries with small prison pops and massive tax hauls approaching 50% of average middle-class incomes might be very zen places. Here it is not, and I oppose any tax that will make it so.
If this troubles people, I invite them to assuage their guilt by informing their tax authority to take much more of their money every year for prison improvement. Additionally informing BOP authorities they will open their homes to probationary multi-decade felons to live in and breakfast with them as their children and spouses are being sized up for future activities.
Yes, do-gooding in the abstract sounds very nice over a coffeeshop latté with the like-minded, but unless you’re going to put a lot of skin in the game, it’s rubbish.
I woke up this morning, decided to pull up some Forensic Files on Netflix then look up a particular victim. Then I found your website as one search result. Uhm…that was HOURS ago and I am still reading! I am constantly Googling cases from FF, Dateline, 48 Hours, etc., and have read many true crime blogs.Yours really is amazing with the professional research, going the extra mile and giving your readers so much more! Anyway, what is even sadder here in the Winger case is the use of a patsy, the mentally impaired young man, to facilitate a murder. You may know of a case in my St. Louis, MO, region that made national recognition — the Pamela Hupp case. https://www.stlmag.com/longform/pam-hupp/
The using of the vulnerable victim to facilitate evil deeds against another innocent soul takes horror to a new level. The depths of human depravity knows no bounds for certain people!
Readers like you make it all worthwhile — thanks so much for the kind words about the blog! Thanks also for the link to the Pam Hupp story. Just started reading it, super absorbing.
Really excellent 4 part article.
What is to be done with these ‘b******s’? – consider the experiences of the very decent & tragic ‘George Wallace’, poor man.
Well, at some point in time, surely,’eugenics’ will absolutely have to find an honourable future after its most dishonourable past of 8/9 decades ago, mostly in Nazi europe. Procreation will be considered of necessity as a privilege rather than a right where a criminal record of any kind will see the offender sterilized, and science will have identified the ‘criminal gene’ allowing a medical intervention whilst said foetus is at its earliest stage.
RIP all good & decent victims of crime.
While there is free will there will always be immorality. Homicidality cannot be reduce to the merely genetic – and even if it could, many would regard eugenic project of human perfectibility as far worse than the crime it replaced.
Sadly, the problem of homicide is far greater in the US than say, the UK, where I am, so to that extent a ‘national’ solution is fitting. What factors could be causative of the US’s much higher homicide rate? One – is it the main? – is gun ownership – the relative ease with which people can kill without much thought. ‘It’s the person who kills, not the gun’ isn’t the point, which is that so many killings unplanned, at least, boil down to bad temper and weapon access.
For the planned, acquisitive murder, is the US’s relative culture of material consumption/wealth acquisition and the ‘status’ this accords inspiring of moral corruption such that wealth trumps life? Illicit drug sale and use is related.
Sadly, no obvious, easy solution.
Slightly straying off subject but (in response to ‘Marcus’) lawful abortion in the US is already mostly a reality – even if it isn’t ever to be cheered – so that particular ‘genie’ is definitely ‘out of the bottle’. My predictions (most certainly not ‘easy’) for a solution to the problem of crime might indeed seem fanciful but they are actually the more likely-a-possibility when set against the single alternative of removing from US citizens their ridiculous & already 2-centuries-out-of-date ‘Right To Bear Arms’.
A further word of clarity vis-à-vis the previously mentioned ‘George Wallace.’
George L Wallace survived the 18 year disappearance of his loving daughter ‘Michele’ in 1974 & eventual proven realisation of her murder to then experience the consequential suicide of his devoted wife a few weeks later. Some decade or so on at the age of 85 that dear man – a lifetime of hard work & service – was himself murdered in his own home during an attempted robbery.
Hello Philp: Good point about abortion – but I’d say we have to set that aside as many don’t regard it as ‘murder’ (while many do), but what we were discussing is universally regarded as murder – intentional killing (or wholly reckless as to intention), even if unplanned and spur-of-the-moment. I certainly think the genie’s out of the bottle regarding the right to bear arms: I see no possibility of infringing that constitutional right – so the only hope for reducing homicide by its major cause (?) of gun ownership/use is in controlling, or control by, those who have or can access them.
I posted elsewhere recently that the 14-17 y/o age group in US is responsible for a disproportionately high number of homicides (presumably by gun) to the percentage of the population in that age group. Mainly males, of course, and the highest disproportion is among African Americans. Homicidality peaks in the mid-late 20s through early 30s. So the problem is with male youth and younger adults, with a subset AAs. What can be done to change these men I don’t know, but we can cite several factors, some of which I cited previously: absent fathers is another (together with early pregnancy); educational under-achievement; perhaps an overly-punitive justice system that puts errant youth away in the toxic environments of prison/jail – training grounds for trouble.
The Right is unlikely to admit that gun ownership is the instrumental cause of homicide of hundreds of thousands since the ‘Wild West’ – but it’s too late.
I’ll read-up oo Mr Wallace: his experience sounds appalling and tragic.